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DBROSITED BV THE ,
LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

SOME FURTHER
EECOLLECTIONS OF A HAPPY LIFE

PJw^o by Elliott &° Fry.

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SOME FUETHEE
EECOLLECTIONS

OF

A HAPPY LIFE
SELECTED FEOM THE JOUENALS OF
MARIANNE NORTH
CHIEFLY BETWEEN THE YEAES 1859 AND 1869
EDITED BY HER SISTER
MRS. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

ILotilron
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW TORE
1893
AU rights reserved

PEEFACE
When publishing the former volumes of my sister's
autobiography, it was thought wiser to cut out some
of the earlier chapters describing well-known ground,
in order to make room for those more distant journeys
by which her name has become known to the world.
But the unexpected success which that book met
with induces me now to add (in a supplementary
volume) those first European journeys, with one
through Egypt and Syria, — all well-trodden ground
nowadays, but which thirty years ago afforded more
interesting though rather more fatiguing experiences.
Eailways and Cook's steamers had not then, in Spain
and on the Nile, quite supplanted the leisurely methods
of more primitive travel. So these experiences of the
past have perhaps a certain value of their own. The
jogging caravan of mules is now, almost everywhere,
a thing of the past, so is the old Spanish diligence
with its twelve wild horses. There is a big hotel at

vi Recollections of a Happy Life
Luxor ! and in Europe at least the ubiquitous railway
will, in a few more years, have made travelling every
where exactly alike.
The sketch of my sister at work on the Island of
Elephanta among a crowd of wild natives was made
by a fellow-passenger on the Nile boat, Mr. E. Phen^
Spiers, F.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEE I
PAGE
In the Pyrenees and Spain, 1859-1860 . . 1

CHAPTEE II
Switzerland — Italy — Trieste — Pola — Fiume —
Pesth — The Danube — Constantinople — Smyrna
—Athens, 1861, 1862  30
CHAPTEE III
Adriatic and Syria, 1865 ..... 73
CHAPTER IV
Egypt, 1865  114
CHAPTEE V
Palestine and Syria, 1866. . . . . 160
CHAPTEE VI
In the Dolomite Alps, Austria, 1867 . . . 213

Portrait of Marianne North . . Frontispiece
Portrait of Frederick North ... 1
A Friendly Audience. From a Sketch by E.
Phen-i Spiers  133

teuton

CHAPTEE I
IN THE PYRENEES AND SPAIN
1859-1860
In August 1859, as soon as the House of Commons
work was over, we wandered off abroad, my father, my
sister, and myself, starting by way of Jersey for the
Pyrenees and Spain. There was a misfortune at the
very start, for into the harbour at St. Heliers, as we
were leaving the ship, fell my precious portmanteau,
packed with those carefully selected necessaries of
which only those who travel with light luggage know the
full value. Everything was thoroughly soaked, and had
to be spread out separately to dry, all my paints, paper,
and dress (only one), for we took the least possible
luggage, and yet had everything we really needed, even
luxuries (?), including a bonnet, whose crown I used to
stuff with a compact roll of stockings and cram into
a hole left for it amongst my underclothing, just big
enough to contain it: when taken out it would be
damped and set in the sun, with the stockings still in
its crown, and it stretched itseK into proper shape
again, and was the admiration of all beholders.
Jersey was very pretty, full of neat villas with
B

2 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
geraniums and fuchsias growing all over them, even
over the very roofs, lovely little bays too, and sheltered
caves, with the water as still as a looking-glass ; but it
had a stronger tide than Eiigen, and my father and
Catherine, sketching on an isolated rock, were stranded
for some hours till a boat was sent round to fetch
them. I meanwhile employed myself in hunting over
the nearer rocks, and finding endless treasures for the
aquarium, quite different ones from those at Hastings ;
the lovely cereus anemones of many tints, troehus, and
ear-shells abounded, and every rock-pool was full of
wonders. Just before we left the island the Queen came up
with her fleet of yachts, and the frigate Emerald
escorting her, and all the inhabitants crowded to the
shore to welcome her. ¦ Three hours' steaming took us
on to St. Malo, an old French town, whose tall houses
were so tightly packed together on a rock that they
would certainly have fallen over the edge into the sea
if they had not been bound together by strong walls,
knotted with towers ; every other rock within three
miles of it was also fortified. The tide rose forty feet,
but we saw it at its lowest and calmest moment, with
thousands of glittering cereus, looking like jewels, set
in their dark rocks beneath the clear water. A river
steamer took us up to Dinan, whose situation reminded
us of Heidelberg, with the same abundance of fruit trees
and orchards round the town; cider is the common drink
there, as it was in Jersey. It was a picturesque old place,
and very cheap to live in, much frequented by English
people seeking economical education for large families.
At Eennes we took the rail to Poitiers, wandered through
its Gothic churches and afterwards through the wide

In the Pyrenees and Spain

streets of Tours ; — rushing on again over long tracts of
flat rich country covered with vines, buckwheat, maize,
millet, and tobacco, to Bordeaux. A noble city this,
half of it old and picturesque, the other half all new,
but with an airy kind of grandeur about it, the fine
river Garonne washing it for miles, and floating ships
of the largest tonnage up to the bridges and quays,
where steam cranes with very simple action were
loading and unloading, saving both time and very
considerable manual labour.
On our way to Arcachon in the train next morning
a sporting French gentleman got into our carriage
in a complete costume de chasse, dog and all. He
gossiped a little, inquired where we were going,
strongly recommended us to try the H6tel de
l'Empereur — actually found its card in his pocket and
gave it as a reminder, and got out at the next station
to join a friend in another carriage. We found out
afterwards it was the landlord himself, who changed
carriages at every station, catching strangers in each
to fill his house ; and having a season ticket he
went backwards and forwards nearly every day to the
capital for the purpose. At Arcachon he put us into
his own omnibus, showed us our rooms in the long
wooden one-storied shanty he called an hotel, after
which we saw him first in a white cap cooking in the
kitchen ; secondly, dressed like a Paris swell, in pure
white even to his boots, carving and dining at the head
of his table, strolling about with his guests in the even
ing, smoking cigarettes and talking affably. By day
light he was back in Bordeaux, carrying on the sport of
trapping boarders: that man deserved to make a fortune.
In those days all the houses seemed much alike at

4 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Arcachon ; they were built of pine logs in the roughest
fashion, and scattered about under the pine forest with
out any kind of plan ; but the smell of the pinasters was
most healthy. Beyond them stretched miles of flat
heath and sand, into which one sank knee-deep when
off the hard edge of the salt waves or the beaten track ;
the natives went about on stilts, using a third pole to
rest on; in this attitude they would stand for hours,
knitting stockings and watching their flocks, to save
themselves the trouble of dismounting and mounting
again. "We saw the postman at one of the stations
stalk across the country and over the hedge, deliver
his letter-bag to the guard and stalk back again, with
out change of countenance. The bathers dressed in a
complete suit of serge, with huge flapping hats ; both
men and women walked in and out of the sea all day
long ; whole families hand in hand took " promenades "
together, and sat between whiles outside their huts,
playing at dominoes, eating ices, and looking at the
tempting things displayed by Catalan pedlars from Spain,
— a pleasant easy life, full of freshness and rich colour.
The railway only went as far as Dax in those
days, from thence we had to squeeze ourselves into the
rotunda of the diligence, with two priests and a nursing-
mother and child ; seven hours of this, combined with
dust and heat, made us enjoy the luxurious quarters,
at Pau, still more the cool shade of Eaux-Chaudes,
though this little bathing-place is on the edge of the
very noisiest of all the Pyrenean torrents, in a crack
which seldom sees the sun. "We had many scrambling
and most fatiguing walks from it, every path but the
one up and down the crack being almost perpendicular ;
once we went over a buttress of the mountain down

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 5
into its sister crack, Eaux -Bonnes, where the noise
of the torrent was rivalled by the perpetual clatter of
French tongues. Another day we made an "ascencion"
on mules of the Pic du Midi as high as we could
manage to ride, and saw a huge flock of those long-
legged, Eoman-nosed, and parti-coloured sheep French
painters delight in drawing, with their attendant
shepherd and dog. The silver firs on these mountains
were overgrown with mistletoe, the wild flowers were
lovely. One fine summer's day we drove to Gabas,
where we had ordered mules to meet us : they had
men's saddles, — tall pointed things, and it took some
little time before they could procure two of the
ordinary women's saddles of Spain, which I think are
far the best for mountain rides. These have a stuffed
coverlet to sit on, cross-bars back and front to hold on
by (if necessary), and a footboard slung underneath,
and one must sit honestly sideways and not wriggle
about too much or the thing will roll round ; but it is
much less fatiguing than pummels for a long journey
over steep paths and rocky stair-cases.
Our Catalan muleteers were most picturesquely clad
in purple with scarlet sashes, scarves, velvet breeches,
tags and tassels, and scarlet baggy caps. The mules
too were much betasselled and bejingled, and were full
of deliberation and dignity, standing much on the
order of their going ; they have an acknowledged leader
amongst them, and an order of precedence for the single
file, which the narrow paths compel them to take.
It might have been a risk of life to interfere with the
mules' ideas on these subjects, and indeed the less one
had to do with guiding them the better, so we sat still
and admired the scenery, and left our locomotion to

6 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
those who had contracted to convey us. After leaving
France the scenery became intensely wild, with not
even a tree to soften the landscape, and after a
continuous climb of some hours we reached the small
lake and bathing-houses of Panticosa, which entirely
covered the only scrap of level ground enclosed in an
amphitheatre of gigantic rocks, the, crack by which we
entered being barely wide enough to let us through
and allow the torrent to escape ; after draining the
little lake it falls almost perpendicularly down the
mountain side for some thousand feet. A zigzag stair
leads over the granite blocks from the back of the
cliffs to Cauterets, but there were patches of snow on
it, and it was said to be too slippery and dangerous to
attempt returning that way, as we had intended.
Panticosa seemed utterly dreary, not a tree, not a
flower, — great empty barrack rooms amongst the snow
and rocks, and a sprinkling of poor shivering Spanish
invalids huddled up in their long cloaks, and walking
about all alone, as if condemned by their doctors to
the solitary system as well as to that rock-bound
prison. The mineral water wa&undrinkable, the baths
looked as if they were never cleaned out, and the food
was — Spanish. One thing in Spain is always good,
and that is chocolate, and generally the bread also ;
people must be very dainty who cannot live well on
those two things. Our descent from this lively place
was made on fresh mules belonging to, and under the
charge of, the Alcalde himself, a most solemn and
magnificent gentleman, accompanied by his son and
a smuggler-looking groom, who carried my father's
black chimney-pot hat on the top of his own gay head
dress. As we got lower the scenery grew green again ;

In the Pyrenees and Spain

first scrubby Scotch firs appeared, and then more
woods, and at last a pretty undulating country studded
with villages, and our destination, Torla, built on a
mountain spur, backed by blue hills.
It was all intensely Spanish, the Posada a perfect
ideal of its kind. We were given possession of the
sala, in which the Padre was playing at cards with the
Major-Commandant of the place; an alcove in this
apartment, with transparent gauze curtains, contained
two beds, which were allotted to my sister and myself ;
some men's clothes which hung around it were stowed
away elsewhere, and we were supplied with a boot-jack,
a pie-dish full of water, and a book of Spanish prayers
— what more could we desire ? My father shared a
corresponding cupboard with a big corporal, all the
muleteers being in a room through his. The night
was not a peaceful one, but the people all had good
manners, and said " What your honour pleases " when
asked in the morning for the bill. They were very
proud of their church, a dark dingy building, painted
and gilt ; as they wished us to admire it we did, and
parted the best of friends with all at Torla.
The ride up to Gavarnie is said to be one of the
finest in the Pyrenees, but clouds prevented our enjoying
it; they only cleared off for an hour the next morning,
so that we could see the famous Cirque with its
amphitheatre of precipices, snow - clad ledges, and
innumerable torrents streaming down from them.
One of these is said to be the second highest fall in
Europe, and has a considerable glacier at its base,
through whose icy arch the river Gave de Pau pierces
its way ; above all is the curious notch in the cliffs
called the Bre~che de Eoland, cut by the sword of that

8 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
mighty champion of France. We longed to climb up
and look through it again into Spain, but had had
clouds enough, so rode on to Luz, whence we sent our
mules home, the Grand Alcalde being abundantly
content to get an extra, five francs, and shaking hands
warmly with each of us, he assured us that his house
was entirely at our disposal whenever it suited us
to take possession of it, the usual compliment of all
Spaniards, which means rather less than the compli
ments of other nations.
St. Sauveur was filled by the French court, and we
saw the. beautiful Empress Eugenie walking about in a
shady hat and red petticoat, with a huge St. Bernard
dog, or driving in a very modest little pony-carriage with
the Emperor, without any attendants or fuss of any
kind. Luz, Cauterets, and Bigorre came next, then we
settled at Luchon for a month in a capital lodging
belonging to the principal guide, Bertrand Estrujo ;
Mr. and Mrs. Bentham being in the same house we
made many charming excursions together, and walks
innumerable. Our landlady was a very pretty speci
men of a Bearnais woman, and used to take us for a
stroll sometimes of an evening, with her knitting
always in her hand, and make the girls sing to us, as
they sat on the benches outside their houses. Her
husband too had a glorious voice, he would sing the
national songs as he rode along, cracking his whip to
keep time, and making the hills echo again and again.
Biding was all the fashion among the French visitors
for the season ; they always went full gallop up and
down the long street, shrieking, laughing, chattering,
and cracking all their whips, so as to make as much
noise as possible, their costumes being as "loud" as

In the Pyrenees and Spain

their talk ; indeed, that slang word apparently comes
from France, the description of a bright coloured dress
being that " it cries from far off," literally translated.
At Luchon I made my first attempt at painting
landscapes, having had an idea till then that I could only
draw near objects the size of life ; but the beauty of
the view from our window tempted me, with its poplar
trees, river, rich meadows, and the fresh snows on the
mountains near the Port de Venasque in the distance ;
that same Port was a smaller edition of the Br§che de
Eoland, and was a favourite excursion of the Luchon
world. There was a hospice under the last steep
zigzags which lead up to the narrow notch in the
rugged cliffs, from whence we looked down into Spain,
with its great Maladetta mountain apparently quite
near, but a long journey to reach it ; a still blue lake
lay close under its snows and rocks, and beyond
were blue mountains, one over the other, and the plain
of Languedoc, like a hazy blue sea, far away. A
scrambling descent on the Spanish side leads down to
the Trou du Taureau, where the icy torrent from the
Maladetta glacier loses itself in a hole of the limestone,
to emerge five miles off as the source of the Garonne.
One day we crossed another beautiful pass, through
forests of grand old sweet chestnut trees, entered Spain
at St. Beat, and followed that same Garonne for many
miles through most picturesque scenery.
Every way round Luchon was lovely, but we had
also something to employ us at home, for we had
determined to learn Spanish, and as my sister was the
only one who had any genius for languages, my father
and I had hard work to keep pace with her. Our
master had originally been an officer in the Spanish

io Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
army, but after killing his colonel in a duel at Tobosa,
he ran away and settled himself as a Professor of
languages at Luchon, where he married a Frenchwoman,
and also kept a grocer's shop, in which we used to see
him weighing out tea and sugar ; he was a good Latin .
scholar, and could read and understand English, while
French came as easy to him as his own language.
On the 1 7th of October we packed our three selves
into the coupe" of the diligence, having quite a large
party of friends to see us off — one old market woman
throwing in bouquets, and hopes of seeing her petites
souris and petits choux back again next year, strange
terms of endearment amongst the French peasantry.
A grand storm accompanied us into Toulouse, and we
stayed a day to dry our trunks, and sketched the
picturesque old cloisters round the Museum, which
are made beautiful by fine old cypress trees, such as
we had never yet seen, nor yet the crisp strong light
and shade of the southern sun which gilded them.
From thence the rail took us to Perpignan, where
we had our first experience of a Spanish diligence; it
had twelve mules, with a horse to lead them, the
latter being ridden by a postilion called " the monkey,"
who jogged through the whole journey, changing his
own saddle on to a fresh horse at each post, and keep
ing the whole cavalcade straight through the narrow
streets and round the sharp turns, — no easy matter.
The mules were all strung together in pairs with bits
of old rope, much knotted and patched ; the mayoral
or coachman only drove the wheelers, but was assisted
by a wild man, who was changed with the animals,
and who jumped up and down from the box to the
road, filling his pockets with stones, and flinging them

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 1 1
with exquisite precision at the ears of each mule as
he named him. One could see the ears wince before
the stone reached them, as he shouted and abused
each in its turn, using between whiles a tremendously
long whip to rest his lungs, till his arm ached ; then
he began the stone exercise again, running up and
down, shouting and throwing as before.
We drove at a furious pace over zigzag passes and
round shoulders of the Pyrenees, racing with a rival
diligence, in the most breakneck manner, too shaken
and excited even to notice the wondrous change of
vegetation till we reached Figueras, and found our
selves among vast woods of olives, caruba, and cork
trees, whose poor scarlet trunks had been lately
skinned. All the water-courses were bordered with
tall and graceful reeds,1 and the Mexican agave offered
a most unpleasant hedge to tumble into, if we were
overturned by any chance. The market was full of
pomegranates, grapes, tomatoes, and pimentoes, all of
the richest colours; and the people and houses
seemed coloured to match them. We had to stay a
night and the best part of a day there, and then only
got on as far as Gerona, a town full of priests and fine
churches raised on terraces, which were approached by
noble flights of marble steps.
At three in the morning we were ready to start,
but were told the mail was full ; another came at eight,
and brought us before night to Barcelona, a magnificent
city, the Liverpool of Spain, with a broad sea-wall,
behind which the largest ships could ride at anchor.
Our hotel was on the Eambla, a kind of boule
vard, where all the fashionable world promenaded or
1 Arundo Donax.

12 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
sat after dark, sipping iced drinks or smoking cigar
ettes, both men and women debghting in the brightest
shawls and scarves. The shops were hung with gay
striped draperies and bHnds ; the very fishes seemed to
partake of the national love of colour, and were most
gorgeous. We made ourselves rather ill while trying
to paint them. Spanish inns of the second class were
so uncomfortable that we decided to go thirty-eight
hours without stopping, on to Valencia, in the coupe"
again of the best diligence — a most comfortable
apartment, with abundant room for our feet as well as
for ourselves, and fitted with a table, lookingrglass, and
pair of lanterns. We took a basket of provisions,
spirit-lamp, and teapot, which rendered us independent
of Spanish food, and gave us time to see something of
the places we stopped at, and to take a walk on ahead
sometimes while the rest were feeding, which was a
great rest.
Near Tarragona I marked a beautiful subject for a
picture — a sobtary old Eoman tomb among dwarf
palms, arbutus, sweet bay, and lavender bushes, with
the blue bay beyond, shadowed by the old town
ahd cathedral on the cliffs above it, and a tall date
tree over all, its feathery head showing gray against
the deep blue of the sky. Later in the night we stopped
at Tortosa^where we had a talk with an Englishman
out of a window, who said he was staying there to
sketch, and we were the first he had seen for some
time who could speak his language. We never heard
his name, nor he ours, but mutually enjoyed our meet
ing there.
Valencia is an ideal Spanish, or rather Moorish
city, its quays, walls, and gateways as finished and

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 1 3
sharp edged as if built yesterday, and the irrigation
still in perfect order, as it was when the Moors left it,
producmg marvellous crops of grapes, corn, beans,
hemp, oranges, pomegranates, figs, olives, and white
mulberry trees, on which enormous quantities of silk
worms are fed. One of the most elegant buildings
in Valencia is the Silk Hall, in which piles of the
golden undyed material might be seen and felt — for
its worth is judged only by touching with the fingers ;
some persons having an especial debcacy of touch or
feeling for this purpose, make a profession of it. After
looking with respect if not appreciation at pictures
in the Museo by Juanes, Eibalto, and other Spanish
painters little known elsewhere, we drove down to the
seaport, in a black covered carriage, rather like a
gondola on wheels, drawn by the fattest of black
horses, along the Moorish quays and bridges, by the
dry river-bed and rice-grounds, to tbe sand-banks and
pine forest, whence we could see the real salt sea, as
well as miles of back water or agua dulce. Dwarf
palms and berried myrtles grew under the tall pines ;
as well as prickly oaks, loaded with acorns in prickly
cups, and agaves with tab. flower-spikes ; nothing that
we were accustomed to at home seemed to grow there.
The best Spanish lace is made in Valencia, and the
women sit outside their houses gossiping of an evening,
and making their black silk cobwebs on pillows on
their knees. They are famous for beauty, and the soft
black drapery about their heads shows it to perfection,
in the warm evening light.
A few hours' drive took us to the railroad, and a
night's journey by it — to Madrid, where we found rooms
ready for us in the principal hotel ; carpets were nailed

14 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
down into every corner, Engbsh furniture and English
prices; it was like the city itself, a miserably pretentious
place. Madrid tries to look like Paris, London, anything
but Spain, but its collection of pictures redeems it,
and one forgot all else in looking at them. It bas
probably the finest collection of portraits in the world,
Titian, Vandyke, Antonio Moro's portrait of Queen
Mary, all in red, — chair, dress, hair, what Whistler
would call a symphony in red (but one he could not
paint). What a masterpiece of rich colour it was !
Velasquez's Eoman-nosed horses seemed to be jumping
straight out of their frames at us, but they were not
exaggerated. I saw many such creatures ambling
through the streets before we left the country, with
their long manes and tails plaited up with ribands and
.jingling ornaments.
One day we met the Princess of the Asturias (aged
six, I believe) taking a walk a few yards in front of
her attendants, a most courtier-like party of grown-up
people, including the old Duchess of Alva. The
Infanta was perfectly composed and most babyishly
haughty in manner, and had a little girl of about her
own age walking after her; reminding us much of
Velasquez's portraits ofthe Infanta of his day, all covered
with pink bows. The royal procession soon got tired of
walking, and were packed into carriages, each drawn
by six mules, with a spare carriage and six following
in case of accidents — they only moved at a foot's pace ;
we afterwards saw the baby heir-apparent with another
train of carriages taking an airing. We did not see
the Queen, but heard the royal librarian complain
that when Her Majesty felt sleepless at night, after
some grand dissipation, she would call him up to find

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 1 5
some valuable old illuminated manuscript, as she wanted
a picture-book to amuse her ; and once sent the
treasure never returned. Many such treasures had
been lost in that way ; she had a catalogue and asked
for them by name ; he was her servant, and could not
refuse them.
Our guide in Madrid was Colonel F  whom
we met accidentally at the table d'Mte. He had spent
the greater part of his life in Spain, being essentially
a soldier of fortune. Some fact of his early life
prevented his return to England, and no romance was
ever stranger than his account of his adventures, with
which he entertained us one night till nearly mid
night; but as I did not know how much of it was true,
and how much not, I made no notes of it. He had
an adopted daughter living with him, whose mother
had been a vivandiere; for many years before he
found her out she had supported herself by smuggling
baskets of salt on her head across the Pyrenean passes,
and the frequent rains caused the salt to melt and
drip over her face, which had given her a horror of it
ever after, so that she could not endure the taste of
salt, and never ate it. The colonel had found a husband
for ber, but Marie could not bear him, and said she
meant to run away and become a dancer in the theatre.
She was rather an anxious charge for the old gentle
man, or for any one ; my father did not look grateful
when, just as we were starting for Toledo, the colonel
brought his daughter down to the station, and said
" Might she go with us, as she wished to pay a visit to
the Governor's wife there." The lady was not well
enough to see her, so we had the benefit of Marie's society
for three days at the inn, and very amusing she was.

1 6 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The Governor-General Milan de Bosch was our
guide over Toledo. He had been educated and well
treated in England when a refugee there, and he
delighted in talking our language and being of use to
any of our country -people. He showed us every
corner of the noble cathedral, to its very roof, and took
us up to the great bell, which has a crack down its
whole length, wide enough to put one's finger through ;
he showed us a gallery full of hideous and gigantic
wooden figures, which were dressed up and carried in
the rebgious processions through the streets, and then,
said the General, " They make me carry a little flag
after them ! Ugh ! " We went also all over the alcazar
or palace, in whose lower stories a regiment of cavalry
(horses and all) could be stabled and stowed, with an
inclined way by which they could ride up into the
great hall above at the order of the Emperor Charles V.
We looked out from its windows into the playground
of a military academy, and the General said, " If the
boys were not now away, I would clap my hands and
cry, ' My little men, come up,' and they would swarm
up the walls bke monkeys to me ; it is good fun to see,
and I often do it." No' doubt the boys loved the fine
old soldier. He showed us a picture of the Queen,
who, he said, was a good creature and full of spirit.
When the war first began with the Moors, she said,
" I wish I were a man, I would go too." " I wish I was
too," said the King, who was a fool.
The position of Toledo is glorious, quite impregnable,
with sheer precipices all round it, nearly encircled
by the winding Tagus at their base, and but for the
hereditary jealousy of Portugal the river could easily
be made navigable, when Toledo would become the

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 1 7
obvious capital of Spain again. The old Jewish
synagogues are very beautiful and unique specimens
of Oriental architecture ; their ceilings are of Lebanon
cedar-wood, and the capitals carved in stone from
their cones and leaves.
We stayed next at Aranjuez, where our eyes were
again refreshed by the sight of green trees in the
royal park, all the centre of Spain (where any irrigation
exists) being given up to corn, and all trees cut down
for fear of harbouring birds to eat the corn, — killing
Peter to rob Paul, as locusts and caterpillars have it all
their own way. Then came a weary journey of fifty-
four hours in a diligence, never stopping by day or
night except to change horses and to swallow a horrible
Spanish meal; if we had stayed anywhere for rest
there was no certainty of the next dibgence (only one
in the twenty-four hours) being able to take us on ;
our limbs ached too much for sleep, and one of the
party was quite ill before reaching Granada. Those
days of long diligence journeys are over now, and the
tourists who abuse modern railways should remember
they have after all something to be thankful for.
We hurried on through the Sierra Morena at night,
the bright moonlight illuminating its singular ravines
or depressions in the table-land of central Spain, and
making the tab sandstone obelisks and pillars look
bke gigantic and most fantastic tombstones of a Titan
race. Then again came a long day of level uninterest
ing country till we reached the old Moorish town of
Jaen, where the road re-enters the hills, and we finally
emerged on the luxuriant Vega of Granada about mid
night, and saw the towers of the Alhambra shining
out in the moonlight, backed by its hills, the snows of
c

1 8 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the Sierra Nevada glittering in the distance beyond
them. " Quien no ha visto Granada, no ha visto nada," and
it certainly satisfies one's most extravagant expectations.
After two days we settled ourselves in the (then)
small hotel of Los Siete Suelos, within the garden of
the Alhambra, where we could dawdle or sketch during
every hour of daybght among the grand old courts
and gateways of the Moorish palaces. It needs no
description ; every one has read Washington Irving or
Ford, and Owen Jones has made every ornament
familiar to lovers of architecture. But the real fresh
ness and colour can only be understood on the spot,
and to me it was a land of enchantment. >Jos6
Ximenes, a tall young Spaniard in long brown cloak
and large Andalusian hat, was our constant companion
and guide, as my father had , heard many stories of
robbers and gipsies, and thought it as well we should
have a native with us when sitting about in lonely places
sketching; that hat -rim contained cigarette-papers,
tobacco, pocket-handkerchief, knife, oranges, and nuts ;
his tongue never ceased to wag, and taught my sister
more Spanish than any master could have done, though
my own ears were always too defective to catch what
he said. The Fonda was entirely Spanish, and the waiter,
Mariano, a regular Sancho Panza, very fat, talkative,
and musical. He used to run in with a dish, put it
down, rush to his guitar, sit down on the stairs and
howl to it, till he thought the dish wanted changing,
when he would make another rush to tbe kitchen,
deposit a fresh dish, and continue his musical enter
tainment on the stairs. He was also an improvisatore,

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 19
and invented marvellous songs of " Mariano's " devotion
to " Mariana," very gratifying to my feelings : some
times the sons of the house and Ximenes also brought
their instruments, and raised the amount of noise to
an extent that was fearful ; but there was a frank
kindness about these people, which, if you did not
believe too much in it or require anything of them,
was most agreeable, and we three met them half way,
and were all good friends.
My one best dress had become very shabby, so we
bought a piece of black Spanish silk, and employed, a
grand lady in a mantilla to make it, which she did
most vilely ; but one could not scold, she smiled so
sweetly, and on my admiring the green glass pins in
her hair she insisted on my keeping them as a keep
sake and taking them to England. So I altered my
dress myself and put it on to go down to the city to
call on the Countess Pulgar, who bved in the same
grand palace her ancestor the historian of Ferdinand
and Isabeba had bved in ; we pulled a bell, the small
postern door opened of itself, and we entered the outer
court (where a groom was washing the horses) and the
patio, with its fountain and orange trees beyond; a
voice told us to come upstairs, and on the top of them
we found our host, who assured us the house was ours,
and took us into a small room containing the family,
and a very grown-up young lady learning to play baby
tunes on the piano, assisted by a master. None of
them knew any language but their own; they sat silent,
expecting to be entertained, a task quite beyond my
powers, so after awhile I sat down and sang to them,
which gave great satisfaction, and we parted the best
of friends : they asked me to come back every Sunday

20 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
evening, when I might have the opportunity of enter
taining all their friends, as well as themselves, and
perhaps drink a bttle lemonade ; we did not, however,
repeat the visit, but I used to be known in Granada
as the Englishwoman who could sing. These poor
Spanish girls do bttle, being brought up in convents,
and married off at once directly they come out ; they
have time for bttle but flirting their fans, and sweep
ing along the Alamada in their long dresses, Indian
shawls and mantillas, the most queen-like of women.
Granada seems a fit setting for them, whether on the
beautiful walks round the city or in the churches ; the
latter are crowded with rich tombs and figures, cut
both in marble and in wood.
In the Cathedral Isabella and her family are buried;
her crown was put on my head, and her sceptre in my
hand, which seemed to bring her nearer to me. In
the Carthusian convent was a perfect museum of
marbles of every kind of colour, its cloisters decorated
with daubs of Eoman Cathobc martyrdoms, including
those of the Carthusian monks of England in the reign
of Henry VIII. — quite a novel historical fact to my
Protestant mind at the time, though I afterwards
learned how much my own ancestor, the first Lord
North, was mixed up in the transaction.
There was a theatre at Granada, and we walked
down one night, with Ximenes carrying a lantern in
front of us, and saw a new comedy, in which a number
of live chickens were introduced with a great cackling,
and gave great delight to the audience. The gipsy
encampment in the caves on the hiU opposite the
Alhambra was full of such studies as Philip has painted
so exquisitely, but was more tempting than safe to

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 2 1
linger too long in. We also traced the old Moorish
aqueducts for many miles into the mountains to their
source, where the waters bubbled up from a crack in
the limestone in sufficient quantity to fill a four-foot
pipe at once, whence it was led round the shoulders of
the mountains, fertilising thousands of acres beneath,
and turning many mills. There were many other
water-courses coming direct from the snows of Nevada
by various conduits, ab fringed with maiden -hair
fern, and many of them needing repair. On one of
the Alhambra towers hangs a great bell, which rings
by day and night, giving notice by its number of
beats to the different divisions of the Vega when their
time comes to turn on the irrigation, thus causing it
to be divided equaUy to all. Tbe best bread was
made near the source of the Fuente Grande; it was
sent in to Granada, and cost more than other bread.
On the 30 th of November we left the Alhambra
with a long train of mules, my sister only being
favoured with a beautiful little cream-coloured horse
and side-saddle, borrowed for her by the landlord's son.
He and Ximenes accompanied us as far as the " Ultimo
Sospiro del Moro," where Bobadil took his last look at
the beloved city, and like us entered the mountains
which close in the Vega on the south. Eoads were
bad and our progress slow, and we had barely enough
daylight left to appreciate the romantic situation of
Alhama, our night's quarters. After a long drag over
a dry gypsum plain covered with thistles and aromatic
herbs, with here and there a few acres of dry corn-
stubble, our party had been increased by the addition
of a Polish artist and an English clergyman, whom
the natives admiringly called " Eubio," from the warm

22 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
tint of his hair, an appellation which made him
exceedingly wrathful, as he did not himself see the
beauty of red hair, and occasionally he retabated by
making ugly rushes with his stick after the children in
the villages.
We also took Mariano, who invented a story about
his sick mother in order to have the fun of a journey
to the coast. He perched himself and his guitar on
the top of our pyramid of luggage on the much endur
ing luggage-mule, and greatly added to our fun also,
for we could never look at him without laughing.
Lanza the muleteer was a famous character, and was
said to be leagued with all the brigands in Spain, so
that no one he undertook to convoy had ever been
robbed. The sunset effects on approaching Alhama were
very curious, the fog behind us in the east becoming a
deep pink colour, while the heights above were appar
ently covered with snow, and the clouds overhead of
a murky brown. On opening the shutters of our un-
glazed windows next morning we found sleety rain
and mist, and no hopes of clearing, so we could not
explore the old Moorish baths and hardly saw the
rocks on which the town stood, the streets being paved
with their rounded tops, without any attempt at
levelhng them. The descent from those bare mount
ains to the rich valley behind Velez Malaga was very
refreshing, though the road was nothing but the dry
river bed, very rough, but bordered by masses of sugar
cane, orange and lemon trees ; any water the dry
summer had left was taken off into irrigation channels.
At last we pushed our way through the oleander
bushes to the high road by the sea, and followed it

i v In the Pyrenees and Spain 23
for seven hours the next day into Malaga. It was
Sunday, and we met streams of people in their most
gorgeous attire, often three on one horse or mule, singing
and playing guitars, and making holiday easily, no
hurry or thought for the morrow ; every group made
a picture with its sunny background of aloes, cactuses,
dwarf palms, reeds, and roses, with vine-covered houses
and iron caged windows, through which the Spanish
cavabers made love to the bright-eyed senoras, both
parties having carnations stuck behind their ears ; the
sea was very blue, the sand very golden, and fishermen
were picking strange-looking fish out of their nets in
the early morning as we rode along.
Malaga did not attract me ; it was full of invalids
and of soldiers returning from the war. Mr. Marks, our
Consul and his family, were most hospitable, urging
us to stop and on no account to go on overland, as we
should certainly be stopped by snow and possibly by
brigands ; however we risked it and met neither. Our
first day was over the wildest crags and steepest of
paths, the baggage-mule fell more than once, slipping
itseK out of its load most cleverly on one occasion,
and giving itseK a great shake of rebef after having
done so; fortunately we met just then two soldiers
with a smuggler prisoner, who was a famous muleteer,
and reloaded for us better than before. But these
accidents delayed us, and we reached Casarabonela by
moonbght. Its streets were bke a stone ladder, so
steep and uneven none but mules could have climbed
them, and we felt their feet were safer than ours for the
purpose. Our posada was in character with the place.
From thence we climbed over ridges of serpentine and
gray and white marble, passing a glorious fountain

24 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
which rushed out from under the former rock, and at
last reached the high table-land, from whence we could
see Eonda, apparently some five miles off; but it took
long to reach it, our men never having an idea of the
time any journey would take, or how far any place
was : guien sale and a shrug was the usual answer to
any such question.
Eonda is a most civilised place, though in those
days it could only be reached by riding. It had foot
pavements, a bull ring, and many noble palaces. A
chain hung across the principal door showed where a
king had once entered, this portal having ever after to
be closed to all of less degree : ab! other mortals had to
enter by a low door which was provided in its place.
From the terrace of Eonda one looked down a
sheer precipice of 700 feet, the river winding at its
foot, after its great leap from the crack between the
town and fortress ; over it a single stone arch had been
thrown, joining the one to the other. In the far dis
tance we could see the rock of Gibraltar no bigger
than a pin's head, on the sea horizon, and overhead
the great eagles came sweeping down, so close to us
that we could see the evil expression in their eyes, as
if they resented our possession of the latter place,
between which and Eonda there is much trade or
rather smuggbng. The views of the strange city as
we left it in the morning were most picturesque ; it
seemed a mountain surrounded by mountains, cleft
partially in two by the river, which fell down some 600
feet amid a mass of greenery, turning many old mills,
themselves almost hidden in ferns and climbing plants.
Through these our path wound, from terrace to terrace,
till we reached the valley below, with its old farms

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 2 5
and villages,* olives, figs, and pomegranates, and farther
on the clear Guadalquivir, with the fortified castle
and town of Zahara perched 1000 feet above it.
"Woe is me," said an ancient Alfaki in 1401, "the
ruins of Zahara will fall on our heads ; the days of the
Moslem Empire in Spain are now numbered." It was
a perfect subject for painting, but wanted a Turner to
render it. We afterwards mounted again among
scrub woods of arbutus, myrtle, laurestinus, and laven
der, to the wretched village where we had to pass the
night. In the ordinary posada the traveller must expect
nothing but a smaU white -washed cell with a
shuttered window, no glass, and a brick floor. A bed
is put up after his arrival, but little else; he must
fetch his own water, bring his own provisions, includ
ing crockery, knives, forks, etc. This was aU amuse
ment to us, and our Polish friend saved my father all
trouble in bargaining and paying; he quite enjoyed
fighting over the bill, and at this last place went so
far as to produce his revolver, frightening his own
party quite as much as the landlord, who, however,
withdrew about haK his demand. We parted quite
on good terms, and he mounted his pony to show us
a short cut and better bit of road, over which we
had an easy ride down and over the plain to Utrera,
observing as we passed quantities of red-berried
mistletoe on the olive trees, and enormous flights of
small birds, which were probably migrating to warmer
winter quarters. The Fonda at Utrera looked quite
magnificent after the places we had lately lodged in ;
and the joby fat landlady petted us, and made a
marvellous stew of the dry old roast turkey we had

26 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
left from our Malaga provisions. Arroz a la Valencia
is a dish for ah emperor. We sent on our luggage
and rested the morning there, and then crawled over
the weary dusty plain to Seville, whose gates we
reached after dark, where we found the luggage wait
ing to be examined (or rather that the custom-house
people should be feed for not examining it). We
were dead tired, and my father too cross to speak.
Our Polish friend made orations in his Itaban Spanish,
and talked of the Emperor of aU the Eussias, of
whose Imperial Guards he was, etc. etc. Nobody cared,
and we were marched off to a guard-house a mile
outside the gates, where at last we found an officer
who was also a gentleman, who made many apologies,
and sent us and our luggage to the much-wished-for
hotel, where we made ourselves at home for ten days.
The Cathedral of Seville soon became, and is still,
my ideal of church architecture ; there is something
so dignified in its simple unbroken columns, its deeply
pointed arches and windows, while its gloom and
mysteriously dark shadows impress one with a sense
of vastness. One could never see the end of it ; indeed
it was so dark that the verger used to bght lucKer
matches and hold them to the different parts of the
pictures to show them bit by bit, a process which
rather came in the way of their general effect, but
left much to the imagination. It was Advent when
we were there, and a curious ceremony took place
every Friday at that season : the Cardinal Archbishop
and some hundred priests walked in procession, ab
carrying wax candles, and seated themselves within
the gilded railings round the high altar, on which
many chandeliers were lighted, all the rest of the

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 27
Cathedral being totally dark; a band of musicians
in plain clothes stood on one side without the
railings, and sixteen chorister boys dressed like the
pages of Ferdinand and Isabella, entered within, with
many bows and waving of their plumed caps, and
danced a kind of figure-of-eight Scotch reel, to the
time and steps of a minuet, singing sweetly all the
while, and bowing at intervals to the altar. It had a
very beautiful effect, seen from the darkness of the
nave, which was crowded with black kneeling figures,
and might have been originaby a popular ceremony
belonging to the worship of the Goddess Ceres, whose
temple the Cathedral had supplanted — which the
priests had thought wise to continue. It was all done
in such a solemn manner it never struck us as being
in any way incongruous tiU one day when a small
dog got in, and was hunted out by the officials, across
the very altar steps, when the Cardinal himself had
his gravity upset.
Our Pobsh friend had a mania for collecting old
pictures, and he picked up two " veritable " Murillos
and a Membng from old shops in Seville. They were
certainly web painted, and if they gave pleasure to
their owner, what did it matter whose hands had
painted them ! We went on to Cordova, and wandered
about under the forest of old heathen pibars, of which
its famous mosque had been bmlt, cobected from all
parts of the Mediterranean coasts by the Moors : and
we abused Charles V. (as ab travellers ought to do)
for having knocked down some hundred of these, to
make room for his great gaudy church in the very
middle of the unique bubding.
After this we floated down the Guadalquivir to

28 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Cadiz, a dreary fortified island, to wait tib some good
ship could take us home. Our friend Lachnitzki
settled himself, with his artist umbreba and easel, out
side the walls one morning, to commence a sketch of
a subject "veritably ravishing;" but this the Spanish
soldiers would not understand, and they marched him
off to the guard-house, — easel, umbrella, and ab, and
kept him all day being examined by different officials,
who insisted that he was making a plan of the fortifica
tions, and was moreover an Engbshman. At last he
succeeded in getting a note to the Eussian Consul, who
soon set him free, and brought him back delighted
with his day's experiences, which he proceeded at once
to illustrate. He was a good bttle fellow, and a most
thorough gentleman, and we were ab sorry to say good
bye when our ship at last took us away homewards on
the 3rd of January 1860. It was a merchant steamer,
loaded with wine, oranges, quicksilver, and oil ; and
there was only one passenger besides ourselves, tbe
whole end of the vessel, with eight berths, being given
to my sister and myself. Captain Eusseb was a
model sailor, fub of talk, and always in good humour.
He used to call my father the admiral, and pretend to
take his orders in ab ship matters, and took him about
showing him everything, and teaching him to know
the pecubarities of ab the sailors, who seemed devoted
to their jolly Captain.
Like most sabors our Captain was superstitious,
and he told us one story out of his personal experi
ence which should interest the Society for Psychical
Eesearch. When a cabin-boy, sailing on his first
voyage, he was one stormy night ordered aloft for
some work among the rigging. And up there, amid

i In the Pyrenees and Spain 29
the whistling of the storm, he saw, as he thought, his
father's face looking wistfully at him between the
shrouds. Young Eusseb was naturally frightened,
and when he came down he told the captain what he
had seen, who advised him to make a note of time
and date ; this he did by writing both inside the lid of
his sea-chest. When at home again, months after
wards, the circumstances of that night having almost
faded from his memory, his mother was one day un
packing his box when she exclaimed : " Why, Jack,
what made you write down these dates here? that
was the night and the hour when your father died,
and his very last words were a message to you ! "
The old recurring story, so often told ! but in this
case the witness was an undoubtedly honest man, and
he fuby bebeved it.
In the middle of the Bay of Biscay we met a
Spanish vessel, which stopped us to ask " where they
were," as they had lost their bearings. " Bless 'em !
they're no better than children, and ain't fit to go
alone," said our Captain, after roaring a curious string
of foreign words at them through his trumpet. The
sea was kind, and we went so close to Hastings we
could see the people walking on the Parade. A fog
met us off Deal, and we had to anchor for the night,
and wished to go on shore and take tea with our
cousin John Nisbet, the Eector ; but the Captain could
not answer for bis men returning sober, and as he
pboted his vessel himseK up to London he wanted
ab hands to help him the next morning, so we stayed
quietly on board till we reached Gravesend, and thence
home for the usual winter festivities at Hastings, and
an uneventful session in London.

CHAPTEE II
SWITZERLAND  ITALY  TRIESTE  POLA  FIUME 
PESTH  THE DANUBE  CONSTANTINOPLE  SMYRNA
 ATHENS
In August 1860 we three again crossed the Chan
nel, with our three portmanteaus weighing under 160
lbs., and liable to no extra charge on railways or
steamers : we made straight for Eagatz.
One cherished article in our dear old father's creed
was a boundless bebef in the virtues and efficiency of
any natural hot water. When on our long mountain
walks we came to any little obscure bath-house fre
quented by a few poor local invabds, he would at
once insist on stopping there, and, whatever its
chemical quabties, plunge trustingly into the healing
waters (sometimes with consequences not altogether
successful). So on this occasion, scorning the fashion
able Eagatz, we drove straight up to the old bath
house of Pfeffers, a dark damp conventual building of
at least two centuries old, with a strong smell of the
domestic mangle pervading its long mouldy corridors.
The old summer residence of the Abbots of Pfeffers
is now turned into a Kur-haus, much frequented by poor
Swiss and German people, who wish to retard the

chap, ii First Impressions of Switzerland 3 1
inevitable complaint of old age by an annual wash in
its beneficent hot water. This bubbles out of the rock
about a quarter of a mile farther inside the hill,
where the crack almost closes 300 feet overhead,
allowing only a few glimpses of the sky ; while the
Tamina rushes furiously like glacier mbk below,
seeming to shake with its violent vibrations the crazy
wooden platforms on which we walked to the spring
head. Except the road and the piece of ground the
house stands on, there is not a scrap of level ground in
the vabey, but a steep climb took us to the lovely Alps
above, where the air was pure enough to bring a feeling
of youth back even to elderly Germans.
But ab Switzerland is now as web known as
Clapham Common : Glarus with its red pocket-hand
kerchiefs and Schapsga cheese, Lucerne and tbe Eighi
rabway, Engelberg with its goats'-milk, and crowds of
old ladies knitting stockings.
We walked up to the Joch pass and found
ourselves for the first time in such an Alpine garden
as no art can make — pale large-eyed forget-me-nots
fighting for the prize of brilliancy with the deep-blue
gentianellas. I cannot say even now which colour
is the most marvellous, so different and yet both
so purely blue. The alpenrosen, the pale yellow
anemones, we felt quite wbd with the wonders of that
alp, and no second one ever had the charm of that
first glimpse of a new world of flowers to me.
We stayed some days at the chalet at Engstlen not
far beyond tbe pass, and could enjoy ab the beauties
of the flora, as well as the grand mountain views at
leisure ; such strong food requires time to digest and
to take in properly. At Engstlen we met a Eoman

32 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
artist who has been my friend ever since. She was a
strange mixture of simple original character and true
appreciation of beautiful things, combined with much
obstinacy, old fashioned prejudice, and conventionality.
She had found perfect artist-quarters at Engstlen, a
mere farmhouse surrounded by a few cheese-making
chalets, piles of mossy boulder stones, cembra pines all
hoary with lichen, twisted and gnarled by the winds, as
web as some scraggy old spruce firs, and beyond a small
lake, with Titbs glaciers reflected in it on one side, on
the other a magnificent view of the great central mass
of the Bernese Oberland. Long-billed birds were per
petually picking at the cembra cones, and flocks of goats
gave life to the foreground. The master of the house,
a notary and mibtia colonel of Meiringen, treated us
all as his invited guests in the old Swiss style, which
is not often found in the country nowadays. A
botanist and geologist of Bern and two Eussian land
scape-painters made a pleasant company, over whom
we found our Engbsh Signora had already estabbshed
certain laws and regulations. " If they wished to
smoke they must go into the cow-house," etc., to which
they gave way most obediently without a grumble.
We feb in with the Francis Galtons at Meiringen,
and walked on with them to Eosenlaui, where the
famous traveber inveigled my father up the glacier,
and flashed signals at his ¦ wife from a pocket lens
instead of coming back to table d'hdte luncheon, as
was expected of him.1
Thence over easy Oberland passes to Grindelwald
and Lauterbrunnen, of which I remember but a confused
1 To flash signals from the Eosenlaui glacier down upon the inn
has long become an impossible feat, as the glacier has in the last thirty
years retreated so far as to be now quite out of sight from below. — Ed

n Over Monte Moro to Macugnaga 33
mixture of chamois, marmots, echoes, strawberries and
cream, big horns, fogs, and fatigue. At Interlachen
we feU in with Blumenthal and his cousin, and had
much music on a bad piano. At Bern we saw the bears
and heard the organ. At Freiburg we heard another
organ, and saw a curious reflection of the suspension
bridge cast on the mist below, every iron bar of its
cobweb-like structure being reflected in long rays
beneath, the sun rising just above it. It is a singular
spot, and the curves of both bridges are very elegant.
Thence to Zermatt and the Eiffel, where we looked
at the rain for two nights and days, having to spread
our waterproofs and umbrellas to keep ourselves from
soakmg in our beds. Now and then we got a peep of
the Matterhorn, which rewarded us for the dreary time
of waiting. From the Gorner Grat at sunrise and from
the Schwartz See it looked still finer. We walked
round by Saas and had a stroll with the famous old
Padre and naturalist Imseng, then over the Monte
Moro, which some people make difficulties about, but
on the top of which we met two cows and an old
woman carrymg a stove on her back ! The day was
perfect, every rock and crevasse was clear on Monte
Eosa, and we were glad to rest under the magnificent old
larch trees on the Itaban side, to enjoy the view of it
and of its gbttering snows against .the deep blue sky,
before descending to Macugnaga.
Here we stayed a week, mostly enveloped in fog
or mist, but between whbes getting higher views, and
I made an elaborate picture in an original and most
unorthodox manner, suited to the unstable weather;
drawing and finishing first the foreground, theh the
church and moraine, finally the mountain as it came
D

34 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
out, bit by bit. Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Lionel
Eobinson were our fellow-prisoners at Macugnaga, and
capital company they were. What good talk there
was at supper-time ! But I confess to a dislike of
those cruel glaciers, and was glad to walk down the
valley to the region of chestnuts and cyclamens, and
farther on to the vines, figs, and Indian corn of Italy.
One can never have too much of Baveno, with its
sunny gardens and islands, or of Lugano, with its steep
mountains coming down sheer into the lake. One
evening we landed at Oria, on the north side, and
climbed to the top of Monte Bogba, reaching its top
at sunset ; having miscalculated the difficulties and
length of the descent on the Lugano side, with no
guide and scarcely a path, we should have got into
serious difficulties but for some good-natured charcoal-
burners who helped us ; but I shab not easily forget
the terror of the rocks and roots, and the nearly pitch
darkness of that night. My father hated guides, and
we had many narrow escapes of this sort.
We returned by Luino to Maggiore, and from Stresa
walked over to Orta, the gem of all these lakes, with its
bustling bttle market-town and island church with the
jingling bells which were always ringing, and the pretty
towers and houses of Pella beyond, all reflected in
long rays on the clear blue water, whence a lovely
shady walk took us over in about five hours to Var-
allo, a fine old town under an isolated rock crowned
by the chapels of the famous Sacro Monte. Here
is the junction of the snowy Sesia with the emerald-
green river from Val Mastalone, which run together
for some little way without mixing ; the purity of the
latter water has caused the place to be famous for its

Venice

3d

grissiki, — long crisp biscuits, which are packed in tins
and sent from Varabo all over the world, and are the
most debcious form of bread I know anywhere.
A diligence took us to Novara, where we saw tubs
full of bve frogs in the market.
Mban, Verona, Brescia, Venice, who can describe
them ? The latter place certainly must impress every
one differently ; to me it was a never-ending series of
wonders — to be put into a floating omnibus at the steps
of the railway station, to see beggars in gondolas, grind
ing organs, Austrian soldiers rebeving guard, funerals
— ab in gondolas ; boats full of gas, and others full of
fresh water, the latter being simply ladled out on the
pavement, and after washing it well running down
open channels into the beautifully ornamented wells,
from whence the professional water-carriers drew it up,
and distributed it in the brightest of brass pails as
drinking water ab over the city.
When we were at Venice the Austrians were the
grievance of the place, and the pigeons of St. Mark
(holy birds) used to have the Itaban colours tied to
their tabs, and come fluttering down at the feet of
the white coats or Bianchi (washerwomen, as they
were called), who dared not touch them or revenge
the insult. All round, inside and out, St. Mark's was
a world of interest. I loved the uneven pavement,
with the pulpit pillars, also cut of different lengths to
fit it (now nicely smoothed and " restored," they say),
and the Armenian pulpit and altar in the nave,
with the grand white-bearded old priest who used to
come and go through his own peculiar service at
that altar every morning.
Outside the building there was a corner where the

36 Recollections of a Hapjpy Life chap.
poodle-clipper used to station himself to perform his
art, whbe the clever dogs would stand on their hind
legs and submit to the ceremony of trimming and
colouring with pink and blue as gravely as an old
gentleman being shaved would have done ; while others
waited their turn and looked on approvingly. Itabans
are very fond of keeping these large poodles, as they
save them the fatigue of carrying their own baskets or
bundles. I bought one tiny black poodle puppy from
a gondolier for three florins, and had to give the waiter
another florin the next morning to take it away, as it
screamed all night long for its mother, from whom it
had never been properly weaned : but it was a ' real
Venetian wonder, with three tufts on its back and one
on the tip of its tail, and as black as ink.
The fishing boats too were wonderful, with richly
coloured sabs and quaint devices, and the piles of
fruit landing on the Eialto — peaches, nectarines, and
plums, in pyramids nearly a yard high, mountains of
water-melons, hot cuttle-fish, and sea-eggs (echinus),
which they eat bice apples in great bites. Of course
we saw miles of gorgeous paintings, of which but a
few remain in my head now. The Santa Barbara of
Palma Vecchio gave me especial pleasure, and the
general richness and warmth of colour of those
Venetian artists is unequabed by any other school.
The sunsets on the lagoon are still warmer and richer
than the paintings, and the perfectly-balanced mass of
Santa Maria Salute outlined against them one never
tires of looking at ; the magnificent Austrian band too
was a rare treat in those days, the Italians have never
succeeding in equalling it, but their hatred of the
invaders was so great that the great square used to

n Milan 37
 —  1. 
empty when the music began, and it was left to the
strangers to enjoy it, — a real enjoyment it was to sit
surrounded by all those curious buildings, with the
pure evening sky overhead, listening to such music.
Milan had already escaped from its German rulers,
and had a more happy busy look ; a Leonardo mania
possessed me then, and I spent hours among his
drawings in the Ambrosian bbrary there : every stroke
of his seemed so full of meaning, and he tried all sorts
of subjects, flowers, caricatures, infernal machines, etc.
I bought all the photographs I could of these drawings,
and have a most interesting collection.
My father hated towns, and his first thought on
entering one was how to get out of it again. He tired
me quite out at Genoa trying to escape; as white
wabs enclose every road one can only do it by scal
ing the very tops of the steep surrounding hbls, whence
the views were certainly fine. A steamer took us on
to Leghorn, thence we went by rab to Pisa, with its
beggars and that curious group of buildings, so ex
quisitely finished and pobshed, but jarringly contrasted
with its surroundings and with the apparent: poverty
of the people. Florence I hardly saw, as I was in bed
two out of the three days there, with the frightful pain
which for many years used to spoil so much of my bfe.
But I remember crawling out after it to some old con
vent, and seeing Mrs. Higford Burr there, sitting on a
high stool copying a Fra Angebco, in a gray dress,
with a gilt net on her exquisite little head. She
made more impression on me than the famous little
picture she spent such time and labour over.
Other friends we met in Florence, and a Mr. 
an art critic, who bestowed a good deal of time

38 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
in lionising my sister and showing her " important
examples of rare men," and other such like art jargon,
entertaining but tiresome to me.
Both Florence and Eome are too full of art treasures;
one does not know what to see and what to leave unseen
in a short time, so that one is kept in a perfect fever of
excitement. I enjoyed more wandering with my father
through the gardens, with their outdoor views, than
over the buildings and galleries. At Eome he made
friends with Gibson, and used to join him in his stroll
round the Pincio before breakfast in the morning. Once
Miss Eaincock took me to see Gibson's young American
pupb, Miss Hosmer, in a large unfurnished studio she
had just taken, where she was preparing to make a
portrait statue of some famous countryman, it was to
be nine feet high, she said (looking herself lbce a small
chbd) ; she had only one chair, which she gave me, as
the stranger ; seating our old friend on the table, she
mounted to the top of a high ladder herself, from
whence she chattered and laughed with the happy air
of one who is successful and sure to please. Miss
Eaincock had once received a note from Gibson, —
" That poor American girl has fever, come and nurse
her," so she had packed up her old carpet-bag and
gone at once to obey the order, thus forming a friend
ship for life.
One day we saw a grand mass in St. Peter's, during
which the poor old Pope in vain tried to get a pinch
of snuff; no sooner had he got his fingers on his box
than he was violently seized, and put into some gorgeous
new raiment, and had to hide it up again : he never
to the end succeeded, though he was infalbble.
St. Peter's itself certainly succeeds in looking small ;

n Aosta 39
from its perfect proportions, I was told, but could never
understand that so-called merit, it would have been
more economical to build it small at once, if that were
the effect wished for ! The music was noisy, and the
unnatural soprano voices of men were unpleasant to me.
I spent some days copying Titian's Bella Donna of the
Schiarra Palace, and then we moved on to Naples,
making different excursions to the buried cities of that
great demon of destruction — Vesuvius. Our voyage to
MarseUles was stormy, and the mistral blew so hard
that we had to turn back from the North Cape of
Corsica and seek shelter in Elba for the night and
part of a day, after which we got on safely, though
the sea was very wbd, the spray often flying off from
waves a mbe long : we shaved along close under the
French cliffs, where the water was of a nearly blue-
black colour, and comparatively calm under the shelter
of the land.
We were right glad to land and rush on to Paris,
where we put up at a genuine old French hotel :
women in white caps sat in a glass case on the stairs,
keeping accounts and gossiping among a number of
canary birds in cages, while men in white aprons did
the housemaid's work. Strange how different our next
neighbours are from us in ab their ways.
In 1861, after Parbament was over, we went
straight to Switzerland again, and walked first round
Mont Blanc, then round Monte Eosa. At Aosta my
father was much interested in hearing from the land
lord, Jean Tairraz, of the recovery and identification of
his brother's body after forty years in the ice, as he had
been buried by an avalanche on one of the glaciers in the
valley of Chamounix in 1820, when Professor Forbes

40 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
prophesied that the body would eventually come out at
the glacier cave, as it actually did in this year, 1861.
It was a happy free bfe, walking over those low
passes, with not more luggage for us ab three than a
strong woman could carry in the basket on her back,
and the country inns were very pleasant, though some
times rather full at that season. Gressonay, in the
Val de Lys, was a nice resting-place, with larch and
spruce feathering down to the glacier at the end of
the valley, and a very civibsed sign-post with " To
Monte Eosa " on the north-east side of it, rather an
unnecessary luxury, we thought. From the Col d'Oben
we got the nearest and finest view of the mountain,
and then descended to the Val Sesia and Varallo again,
and over the pretty Col di Colma, to Orta and the Leone
d'Or, where our old friend the cook in his white cap
held the boat steady as we walked straight in at the
window of the little salon, and felt at home again by
the blue lake that is never ruffled. We' drove by
Varese to Como, and lingered a week at Bebagio, in
those days less full of Engbsh than it is now, and
from thence rushed again to Venice.
Of Venice my father writes : " The sensation of
being in a gondola and drinking evening coffee in St.
Mark's piazza never tires. I wonder how I can have
lived tbl sixty without even flirting with the Sea
Cybele ? St. Mark's too, that gorgeous incarnation of
Byzantine ideas, has an attraction about its ceibng of
dub burnished gold, and the wavy surface of its
cracked floor, that no other building I know can rival.
True, both are greasy and decayed, but the glorious
mosaics never fade, and the cluster of domes, under
the affectedly plain shadow of their vast beb-tower,

n Pola 4 1
give a contrast that Pugin and Vitruvius together
could not have imagined, and that modern architects
cannot even copy."
We left the Queen of the Sea at sunrise on a Sep
tember morning, and steamed away through the grow
ing daybght, watching her towers and cupolas gradually
sink under the horizon, lovely to the last. On board
were two navy men of very different types. One a
Hungarian, who had gone round the world in the
Novara, talked perfect English, and was well read on
ab subjects ; the other a Yankee merchant-captain,
whose ship was bubt and registered in a southern port,
though its owners belonged to Boston, and he dared
not return to America for fear of capture on both sides
while the war lasted. So he had bought 200 boxes
of Venetian shell ornaments, and meant to take them
to sell at Eio, in addition to the corn he was loading
with, at what he cabed Try-est. That same place is
amusing for a day or so ; its grand hotel is on the
actual quay, with a wide busy road separating it from
the big ships lying against the wharves in the harbour,
and one can breakfast if one likes outside the win
dows, at bttle tables in the midst of the crowd of
busy people, without doing anything out of fashion.
Flower girls bring lovely bouquets to seb, and every
kind of strange fruit, birds, and monkeys may be
bought there.
We only rested a day, and then coasted along in a
smab steamer down the Adriatic to Pola, stopping at
many picturesque places and taking in picturesque
people. Pola was full of soldiers, and not tempting
to stay in, but we had time to see and sketch the
grand Eoman amphitheatre. All its interior fittings

42 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
have been carted away for building purposes, and the
mere shell remains, with the blue sea and sky showing
through its wide arches and portals ; it stands quite at
the edge of the sea, in a small bay, and the golden
tinted marbles are reflected on its stib surface as in a
looking-glass. A small arch of Victory and a temple
of Juno are also in good preservation.
We had a still moonbght to continue our voyage,
and entered the beautiful landlocked bay of Fiume
next morning. Mr. Glennie the artist had given us
letters to his sister there, and she and her family were
most hospitable. They had made a fortune out of some
paper-mbls they had established at the mouth of one
of those strange rivers of pure water, which gush out of
limestone cracks quite close to the sea-shore ; indeed,
these springs sometimes bubble up from under the sea,
and one can row out in a boat and taste the perfectly
fresh water as it forces itself up in the midst of the salt.
All the tops of the hills are mere deserts of dry lime
stone with hobows through which the rain-water filters ,
into the cracks beneath. We saw washerwomen at
their work on the actual sea-beach, through which a
considerable stream of pure water was bubbbng out.
Fiume used to be the port of Hungary, but had
lately been separated from that great country, and
declared part of Croatia, at which it grumbled much,
and little trade comes near it now. We keep a Consul
there, with nothing to do, so he was delighted to lionise
us. He gave us a dinner of the country, consisting
of tunny-fish (tasting like roast pork), polenta, and
brodetta, the latter a stew of all sorts of odds and ends
of fish, with a good deal of ob ; the polenta is a dry
porridge of Indian corn, of which in the mountains I

Adelsberg 43

have often made a meal, with plenty of milk ; it is
the very best diet for wabting or working on. Our
Consul's son-in-law was a sea-captain with eighty
florins a month, out of which he supported his old
mother comfortably, and never got into debt. The
usual peasant's dress is pretty, those of one of the near
islands always dressed in black wool, in memory of
their chief Frangipani, a famous pirate, who was hung
by the Austrians (their sheep were also ab black, but
of course that had nothing to do with the colour of
the wool).
Ten hours' drag over the stony hills, and past
many of the curious natural filters of Istria, took us
to Adelsberg, whose caves are one of the wonders of
the world. We walked in for some two or three
miles, crossing and recrossing the black rushing river,
and seeing ab the elegant white and yellow stalactites
as web as we could, with an " extra Beleuchtigung " of
about a dozen tabow candles. We refused to buy one
of the wonderful little eyeless pink swimming efts,
peculiar to the place, cabed Proteus, but it probably
was starved to death by some other less conscientious
tourists who came next. The wet weather prevented
our going to see that curious cave fortress on the lake
of Zirknitz, which lake dries up for some months of every
year, sufficiently long to allow a harvest of corn to be
sown and reaped upon its site, after which the lake
refibs, and, strange to say, becomes again full of fish.
We took the rail on to Pragershof, a junction
station, meaning to sleep there, but found not a house,
even the station was only beginning to rise from the
ground, so we caught a train up the valley of the
Drave to Pettau, over a rich flat country full of vine-

44 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
yards. As one enters Hungary the cultivation
increases, and immense plains of Indian corn and
pumpkins begin, with groves of venerable oaks, which
reminded us of English parks. Great herds of red
and white cattle were to be seen, a thousand often in
one drove, curly-haired swine in vast quantities, but
rarely any sheep, and no fences anywhere. We were
again set down at our journey's end without any
apparent facilities for going -or staying. The good-
natured station-master tried to get us a cart, but in
vain, and we walked on a mile or more to the ferry
on the edge of the Platten See, where a farmer kindly
offered us a bft in his barge full of sacks of corn,
which was bound, as we were, for Fiired. The boat
men were also kind, though their load was already
very heavy.
We stuck continually in the mud, and all hands
(except ourselves) went overboard to push and pull
the boat along, including two pohcemen in petticoats,
who shot at the ducks between whiles with their long
guns ; it was quite dark before we landed, and we
had to grope our way up to the almost deserted bath
house. The season was over, and we had 200 rooms
to choose from ; the cold empty passages seemed end
less, but English were very popular with Hungarians
then, and they gave us everything they liked best
themselves, one of their dishes being one of the few I
have ever met with which I could not swabow, Borf
nudeln, its composition being home-made maccaroni
and sour curds, finished in bad oil. Kaiser Franz was
said to have died from eating it, and I do not wonder.
The only other guests in Fiired were a most charm
ing old Professor from Pesth, his son, and an engineer.

ii Pesth 45
They took us an expedition the next day to see a
convent which draws a revenue of 100,000 guldens a
year from the surrounding land, and supports six monks
only out of it, who, they said, lead a most jolly bfe.
The convent is built on a cliff jutting out into the
lake, said to be volcanic, with limestone and fossil
shells embedded in it.
The vintage was going on, and the pickers brought
us quantities of debcious grapes, and would accept
nothing in return. Driving across the country in
Hungary is a trial to one's bones, the great carts (or
rather baskets on wheels) have no springs and no
seats, only some hay, on which it is wise to rest at full
length, and perfectly loosely ; if one tries to resist the
shaking, or to hold on, one's hands are burnt by the
friction, and one's bones run a chance of dislocation.
At Stuhlweissenburg we found a railway which took
us to Pesth, and we woke up the next morning to see
the noble river Danube rushing under our windows
and dividing us from the quaint old city of Ofen on
the other side, with the fine palace of the Blocksberg
on they height above, looking gigantic among crowds
of bttle one-storied houses, which are the fashion in
Hungary. Pesth itself is cosmopolitan, and has fine buildings
of every style in it, and splendid shops ; it mighb have
been of any nationality, except for the inhabitants, the
men being all in high boots and much braided coats,
the ladies imitating them with jaunty Spanish hats,
and cloaks hanging over one shoulder, fastened with
sbver chains and clasps — no Austrian soldiers were to
be seen anywhere. We went twice down for a wash
in the hot sulphur baths of Kaisersbad, and wandered

46 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
among the vineyards above it, where the best Ofner
wine was making — men dancing on the grapes in
their high boots ! (I believe ab Hungarians sleep in
boots.) All sorts of grapes were put in together, of all
colours, and after they had been trodden sufficiently,
the mash was carted home in rude barrels on wheels,
and placed in loosely-jointed tubs to strain, whence the
juice ran out in a continuous stream, enough to fill a
two-inch pipe at once. The grapes all grow within a
foot of the ground, and are as sweet as sugar.
We also went up the river to Gran, the seat of the
Prince Primate of Hungary, a small Pope in those
parts with two bishops under him ; he has enormous
revenues, and is generaby a prince of the blood : one
of the last had been appointed to the office when a
baby in arms, and died when he was twenty-three.
A grand Cathedral had been built at Gran, on the cbff
over the river, all of red porphyry ; and the chapter, in
a spirit of ultra church-wardenism, had plastered all
the inside over with a bght scagbola, because the
building seemed too dark. It evidently occupied the
site of ah old fortress, possibly Eoman, and was backed
by lovely vine-covered hbls, looking over long reaches
of the Danube, as well as its own tributary river
Gran. The vintage was also in full operation, but here
the grapes were pounded with wooden pestles instead
of boots, which looked at any rate cleaner.
Eeturning down the river in the steamer we made
friends ' with a young doctor of law, in a complete
blue suit all over braid, who brought a volume of
English poetry out of his pocket, and talked our
language perfectly (as did six other gentlemen on
board). They all said we ought to go and see the fair

Debreczin 47

at Debreczin, and he gave us his card for some friends
there. He also took us to see some national dancing,
and to hear some good gipsy music in a Pesth caf-i,
for that strange race make all the public music in
Hungary, and their melodies have a peculiar wild
character of their own. The whole way to Debreczin
was over a perfectly flat plain; no forest was visible till
we came near our journey's end, but there was much
fine corn land. It seemed all to be a light gravelly
abuvium : originally, no doubt, the plain had been a
lake which had its exit at the Iron Gates, and up
which, doubtless, Jason's boat had sabed to pick up
the golden fleece and deposit it at Laibach. The
Platten See and some few other lakes, with low flat
shores, are ab that now remain of this enormous
European Caspian Sea. The only rebef to the endless
flats was from a few probable barrows, which were called
Eussian soldiers' graves.
Debreczin Fair was a sight worth coming to see, —
whole streets of rough wooden sheds, some filled with
furs, some with books or groceries, shoes, iron and metal
work. Everything was sold wholesale, and the natives
from ab parts of Hungary and its borderlands had
gathered together there, to stock their shops for the com
ing year. Cattle and horses were also collected in mul
titudes, and there were races and other entertainments
to amuse the people. Our landlord sent us in his own
carriage, drawn by beautiful half-broken young horses,
with scarcely any harness on them, and we were put
in the best places, and made much of, because we were
Engbsh, the popular nation at that period. There were
Engbsh horses to run, an English cup to win, and an
old English jockey to ride the favourite horse, who had

48 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
been for forty years in the service of the greatest
grandee in that district; he himself was dressed in
purple from head to foot, and covered with braid and
tassels ; he bade us welcome in good Engbsh, with the
manners of an English gentleman ; his family and all
the .other grandees came on to the course at full gallop,
in springless hampers on wheels, with magnificent
horses driven three abreast, and gorgeous servants
hanging on behind. Ab these gentlemen wore long
spurs on their high boots, one of them remarking to
us that " they looked well, they were so lively."
The peasantry were generally clothed in long sheep
skin coats, many of them wearing the fur outside, and
of course all wore the inevitable national boots.
The one-storied houses looked absurdly small on
each side of the wide streets, which were often a hun
dred feet across, about thirty feet in the centre being
paved with circular sections of trees, filled in with
smaber wood, making a very solid roadway, with a
most dusty edge on each side of it. As every house
of any importance is within its own yard and gardens,
and none are more than one story high, it is not diffi
cult to understand why the towns cover so much room.
There are no detached cottages, and few villages any
where. The card our friend in blue had given us was
for the chief lawyer of the place, who, with his family,
received us like old friends ; they had plates laid for
us at every meal, whether we came or not, and the
daughter (who talked good English) lionised us every
where. They gave us a grand supper at their house, their
bill of fare being in the following order : Tea, bread and
butter, ,roast potatoes, and cakes ; then, when we thought

" Down the Danube 49
all was overcame stirlet, — a famous fish from the Theiss,
with a long pointed nose, — fried chicken, no wine, but
rum and milk with the tea. My father was modest
about smoking in the smart drawing-room, as his host
did, but whenever he let his cigar go out it was at
once relit, nolens volens. When we returned to the
hotel after this entertainment we. found some dozens
of new guests had arrived, old friends, our host said,
and a third bed had been put in our room for my
father, much to his dismay, the only place he could
have — the passages were already full of less particular
guests, both male and female, robed up in their sheep
skins. We were introduced to the Burgomeister, a most
gentlemanly man, who also talked our language ; he
has a council of 200 under him, and is elected by the
whole city for a period of three years. He invited
and pressed us to stop for his State ball, but we had
no wedding garments, and did not think three in a
room comfort, according to our insular prejudices.
A long sandy desert stretches beyond Debreczin,
and after that came the famous vineyards of Tokay,
but they did not tempt us to go more out of our way,
and we turned towards the Danube again, stopping at
the wabed city of Temeswar, where there was another
crowded fair, but more Austrian than Hungarian. From
Basias steamers took us on, we changed them three
times, and went through grand scenery, driving in
carts past the rapids caused by the famous iron rocks,
which stretch across the wide river, but not so con
tinuously as to prevent the barge which conveyed the
luggage from floating down the stream between them.
A most curious collection of people made the voyage
with us, Bulgarians, Moldavians, Wabachians, drawn
E

50 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
apparently from the very scum of Europe ; dice-boxes
were continuaby rattling, and the women wore diamond
ornaments, and accused one another of steabng them
in the ladies' cabin. Many of these people spend their
summers at Homburg or Baden, and their winters at
Bucharest, which is the Paris of the Levant.
We had a most unwholesome fog on the Lower
Danube, and one morning we passed another steamer
sticking in the mud, and barely visible through the
thick atmosphere, but out of one of the cabin windows
my father recognised the head of Mr. Darby Griffiths,
M.P., and began to understand what he had seen in the
papers at Pesth about how the Anglomaniacs there had
been feting Milord Berby ! The real man, he knew,
was at home at the time, now the riddle was solved,
it had been Barby Griffiths who had been taken for a
Prime Minister, and treated " as sich."
At Tchernawoda we landed and took the rabroad
towards Kustendge over a scarcely dried up lake, rank
with vegetation, but, except in one small spot, where a
good crop of cabbages was growing, it was entirely
abandoned to a forest growth of weeds. The banks
were of a chalky limestone, and Trajan's wall came down
continuously in a double rampart, with ditch outside,
pretty close to the rails, south of the road from west
to east. About four miles from Kustendge the loco
motive made up its mind, from some reason unknown,
to go no further, and we had to walk the rest of the
way on foot,* under the full light of the moon,
an officer of the Prussian Embassy at Constantinople
attaching himseK to us, sword and all, and declaring
all the rest of the party to be canaille. One old
lady particularly, who had amused us much by her

ii Black Sea and Bosphorus 5 1
rattling talk, he professed to know as a Eussian spy,
and he lectured us on this maxim, " Whenever you
meet a woman travelling alone, who knows all lan
guages, keep your gloves on ! " I have bttle doubt he
was right in that case, if not in another. Of a fine old
Turk in a fez, who was inspecting telegraphs, he said,
" He knows me, and I know him, and do not bke him."
My father thought him rather hard on this old father
of all telegraphs, with whom he had been smoking
some long and most satisfactory pipes, but the Prussian
was not a man to contradict, he marched us on, clear
of ab the rest ; they went into the inn, while we con
tinued straight on board the steamer, where he made
the unwilling and sleepy steward bring out a good
supper for us.
At five the next morning my father went on shore,
through the poisonous fog, to identify and bring our
luggage on board ; and seeing the Prussian's unclaimed,
brought it also with him : a few hours after, when
we were on our way through the Black Sea, the
wohlgeborener Herr came up storming with rage at
his luggage having been left behind, then my father
quietly showed it to him, and said he had brought it
for him. He never even said " Thank you," and took
no more notice of us !
The Bosphorus, when we entered it at sunrise, was
a sight not easily forgotten. All the Danube fogs
were gone, the air was pure and soft, and the sky
of the clearest, tints. Many coloured little wooden
houses were dotted among the rich gardens on the
banks, while great masses of dark cypress trees were
relieved by white minarets, domes, and palaces. The
hills above, though less high, reminded us (in their

52 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
general proportion of land to water, and their
abundant population) of the Como lake ; and the
scene grew always more and more beautiful, till we
landed at the; steps of Galata.
An old giant mounted all our three portmanteaus on
his back and head, while we followed him up the steeply-
paved street to our hotel at Pera, from whence the
views were -exquisite of the Bosphorus below, with
its islanaftbwer of Miranda and the tab cypress groves
of the Scutari cemeteries creeping up the hbl of
Bourgalu, on the other side of the water. The
abundance and richness of the colouring in this, and
ab general views of Constantinople, was what struck
me most. Every house was apparently tinted differ
ently, in shades of red or yellow, blue or green, and
yet all was harmonious; the mosques alone were
white; their forms were so graceful that too much
light could never be thrown on them. Then the
lattice-work of the hanging balconies of the windows
rebeved the high straight walls most agreeably.
Every house seemed to be buried in its own garden,
so that as much space was occupied by trees as by
buildings when looking down on the city.
Pera is built on a high ridge, in the angle formed
by the junction of the Golden Horn with the Bosphorus.
The Embassies were mostly there, including a huge one,
which our nation had paid dearly for, but which was
at that time always shut up, Lady Bulwer preferring
to live at Buyukdere, and her husband in bachelor
quarters at Scutari, where my father visited him, and
he talked of old Harrow days, taking doses of physic
at intervals, and looking bke the very impersonation
of Moliere's Malade Imaginaire.

ii Constantinople 53
The cemeteries behind Scutari were tempting sub
jects for a picture; the tombstones tumbling about
in all directions, their turbaned heads richly coloured,
and the Arabic inscriptions deeply cut, their graceful
curves being always most ornamental. The women's
tombs are not worthy of inscriptions, and have merely
a flower cut on them; according to Mahometan belief
women are little above vegetables, and only go to Heaven
by favour of their husband — if he thinks he shall be
the happier there for taking them with him. These
ideas made sketching much easier for us than for a
man ; we had no souls, and could not injure the souls
of others by drawing their portraits; it was rather
amusing to see us at it ! All the cemeteries are
shaded by tab black cypress trees ; their sweet-smell
ing wood is supposed to purify the air, and to do away
with the unwholesomeness of the Oriental graveyard.
The peeps of landscape and deep blue sea from under
these dark shades were dazzling, and most exquisite. .
The ferry-boat which took us across was always en
tertaining, and once my sister and I had the courage to
go in the part set aside for women — a kind of covered
sheep-pen. We did not venture a second time, for the
occupants nearly pulled us to pieces in their curiosity
to see what we were made of, and how we were put
together. They themselves were anything but beauti
ful, and much marked with the smab-pox ; we found it
easy, even in our short experience of their habits and
ways, to understand the little respect in which they are
held at home. The long bridge of boats leading to
Seraglio Point was also a capital place to linger at, one
saw there people of every Oriental race and nation :
Jews, Armenians, Greeks, troops of women — mere

54 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
bundles of gaby-coloured sbks or cabcoes, slouching
along in yellow boots, with loose yellow sbppers down
at heel; with one and sometimes two bright eyes
and painted bds peering out at holes on the top of
the bundle, henna-dyed finger-tips keeping it open.
Then there were packs of mangy dogs in every street,
a most melancholy race, kicked and ib treated, but
never exterminated, as they are useful scavengers.
They cannot endure Christians, and revenge on them
the bad usage they dare not resent from Orientals.
Another bridge had been begun but never finished
across the Golden Horn, as it came within the province
of Ab Pasha, the Sultan's brother-in-law, and as it
was to be a free .bridge, it would have injured the tolls
of the other, in which he had an interest. We saw
the Sultan going to the mosque of Sultan Valide, and
were allowed, as strangers, to stand close to the gate,
though all the natives were pushed back. All the
court dismounted some yards before reaching us, and
followed on foot, the Sultan alone riding in, on a
noble white Arab, who picked his steps most daintily
over the paved court, and seemed quite conscious of
the honour of carrying the Defender of the Faithful.
Abdul Aziz looked the grand Turk admirably, keeping
his eyes fixed in front, and seeing no one ; and his
dress was quite simple except for the diamond aigrette
in his fez.
Of the great mosque of Sta Sophia we saw little ;
it is all washed over inside with thick yellow ochre,
through which one could just distinguish the Cimabue-
like head of Christ in the mosaic of its roof. The
curious twisted column of brazen snakes, which once
held the golden cup in the temple of Delphi, excited

Constantinople 5 5

my father more than anything else, and set him spout
ing poetry for some days after seeing it. One day
we steamed up the Bosphorus as far as Buyukdere,
and looked into the Black Sea again, whence a fine
warm wind was sending the boihng floods down at a
great rate, almost as rapid as the Ehone at Geneva,
and nearly as clear, the united waters of the Danube,
Dnieper, Dniester, Don, and other smaller rivers, — a
mighty stream.
Behind Buyukdere in a small meadow stand the
seven famous plane trees, the remains of one which
perhaps existed there when Constantine founded his
city, and from whose roots the present noble circle of
trees were the mere offshoots. Greek fishermen were
landing quantities of tunny-shaped fish, with mackerel
colouring, from fixed lines, while a man perched
on a long pole out at sea watched most carefully for
the shoal. We had seen the same plan followed near
Fiume for the tunny-fishing. Gray mubet seemed
the best fish in the market ; we also saw a sword-fish
ten feet long lying there for sale.
On the 23rd of October we left Constantinople
in an Austrian Lloyd steamer, with some 500 other
passengers, forty of whom went first class. My father
shared his cabin with a very web -mannered young
Effendi, Secretary to the Embassy at St. Petersburg,
who employed himseK in writing a long letter to his
father, holding a rob of paper on the palm of one hand,
and writing with the other. Our ladies' cabin was
filled with some great man's harem, having a regular
black Mesrom in charge, who ate at our table, and
went in and out amongst the ladies as unconcernedly
as a black dog. We two sisters had an inner cabin to

56 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
ourselves. The deck was literaby strewn from fore
to .aft with Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians, at least
half of whom were women, and among these a parcel
of Georgian and Circassian girls who were going to be
sold in Egypt. The dealer, a truculent old savage, well
dressed in dark robes and an extraordinary turban,
wished to go first class with a second class ticket, but
did not get his own way. He entered all the party in
the ship's books as his daughters, letting some of his
servants lead them about, and feed them on vegetable
messes. They were mostly young, and we were told
the old wretch expected to make £100 or £150 apiece
by them. They did not look in the least unhappy,
and nobody seemed to think that a Turkish law
making such traffic illegal made, any difference.
At the Dardanelles we stopped a short while
opposite " Pot Castle," where boat-loads of the famous
crockery came out to us. A grand yellow jug was
handed up at the end of a long hooked pole, and an
extinguisher tied on the end of another was poked at
us, into which we dropped sixpence. The man lowered
it, looked in, and shook his head. We shook ours, took
back the sixpence and walked away, but were soon
recabed : and the jug was given to us, and another too,
at our own price — sixpence each. We found afterwards
that these same jugs had sold for six guineas in our
great exhibition of '62.
After that we hoisted sail, and passed between
Tenedos and the Troad: three tumuli being con
spicuous on the mainland. There is a channel five
or six miles wide between it and the island (which
is about as big as the Isle of Wight), leaving
plenty of room for ten times Agamemnon's fleet to

ii Troad 57
anchor in. Immediately south of the low land with
the tumuli the hibs began to come closer down to the
sea, and craggy mountains appeared behind them. My
father thought he could see Mount Ida, and began
spouting unknown tongues again, saying it was worth
any fatigue to have had these glimpses of old Homer's
scenery, and of those tumub, that were traditionaby
(and he bebeved truly) erected thirty centuries ago.
Mitylene is said to have a population of 45,000, and
to give a revenue of £60,000 from olives alone, all
mortgaged by the Government. About sunset we
passed some pretty rocky islets, and saw a smab Greek
brig, unable to stand the windy gusts from the GuK of
Adramyttium, but in spite of its topsails being carried
right away, the gabant bttle ship stood right on.
As the sun sank the wind dropped, and we entered
the beautiful bay of Mitylene, where we landed and
received many passengers, among others the Pacha-
Governor of the island, a most courteous gentleman of
about forty-five. Our young Effendi would have knelt
to kiss his hand, but was prevented with much good-
humoured dignity. We woke up the next morning
in the lovely bay of Smyrna, and soon found our way
to the new hotel, which the German landlord and his
young wKe of eighteen had only taken possession of
that morning, and as new brooms sweep clean, it was
then fresh and wholesome quarters.
Our reception was most kind; Mr. Meyer guided us
over the entertaining bazaars, where the never-ending
strings of loaded camels and their wild drivers give an
Eastern look that is wanting in those of Constantinople.
Nothing stops them, nor puts them out, and woe be
to the person or thing which comes in their way :

58 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
tramp tramp, crash crash, down go the shutters, or
children, donkeys, crockery, anything which projects
too far from the walls, or does not squeeze itself
sufficiently flat, before the big ship of the desert
approaches. The Arab element abounded, and those
grand -looking figures clothed in kaftans seemed as
much astonished at all they saw in the shops and
streets as we were. We climbed up to the old castle
on the hill above the town, and found its wabs largely
composed of marbles from old Greek buildings. Near
it was the tomb of Polycarp, " Saint and Martyr," one
of the early Greek bishops, who was kibed in the
amphitheatre (some ruins of which also remain not far
off). His tomb is marked by one noble cypress, which
makes a most tempting foreground for the lovely
view of the blue bay set in a semicircle of lbac hbls
beyond. AR around the tomb are other tombs of
dervishes, as they say " it is good to enter Heaven with
the holy," and care not to what particular denomina
tion the saint belongs.
The hbls around Smyrna are arid and treeless, but
in the hollows, where any water can be found, the
vegetation is most luxuriant. The grapes are debcious,
the large ones bke those of Valencia, golden, and large
as pigeon's eggs ; the small ones are stoneless, and when
dried are exported as sultana raisins, most intensely
sweet, and their very stalks eatable ; figs, pomegranates,
and apricots are also famous at Smyrna. Donkeys
took us to the lovely gardens of Boudja, where clear
springs come out from under the limestone crust, and
(wherever the wretched Government have kept up the
irrigation system) have produced a richness of vegeta
tion which has given the vabey the name of Paradise.

ii Smyrna 59
Another day we spent with an English engineer, who
had bubt himself an Indian bungalow on the very site
of the Greek temple of Hercules, the remains of which
he discovered when digging the foundations of his gar
den. Three noble aqueducts were close by, crossing
the valley of the Melas, which was reduced by irriga
ting channels to a mere rivulet, fringed with oleanders,
figs, plane scrub, dwarf oaks, and many other shrubs
whose names we did not know, besides the universal
bramble in abundance. One of those aqueducts still
suppbes the Turkish quarter of Smyrna with pure
water, from a source about a mbe higher up. We
were shown an aperture through a jutting point of the
tufa rock cabed Homer's cave, but it was evidently the
mere cavity of a disused channel or aqueduct, with
others stib running above and below it. The aque
duct bridges, stib perfect across the valley, are nobly
picturesque, most of them with Gothic arches. An
Engbsh mbler, a genuine John Bull, was establish
ing a fine flour mbl close to Homer's cave, with a
wheel of thirty-five feet diameter ; wood, stones, and all
being brought direct from England. He treated my
father and our friend the engineer to Bass's pale ale.
At the temple we found a bit of hard mortar with the
print of the workman's three fingers on it, probably
marked twenty centuries ago, possibly longer.
"Caravan Bridge" is another of the sights of Smyrna.
Near to it is a bit of waste ground, where all the camels
rest after their weary journeys ; large parties came and
went while we watched them, generally tied in strings
of five, head to tail, and led in front by a donkey, on
which their driver rides. We watched them feeding :
first they had a heap of chopped barley straw,

60 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
then the offer of water, but few drank much, looking
round and moaning; they seemed to prefer grum
bling to enjoying themselves. At last they received
great balls of dough, which the men had kneaded up
for them of flour and water. These were thrust into
their mouths in the rudest way. We were told they
liked this, but they showed no signs of pleasure, and
continued to look discontented and to make miserable
moanings always. They were very rough, and never
groomed nor clipped, but were said to be worth up to
£50 apiece, and to earn on their journeys about ten
shillings a day each. Their drivers were always
honest ; the common street hammal might be trusted
with untold gold.
Many Asiatic tribes come to trade at Smyrna, and
the old banker said he could talk French, Engbsh,
Arabic, Turkish, Druse, Itaban, and Greek fluently,
and all were necessary in his business there. We
paid a visit to his pretty vbla at Bournabat, and also
to the father of the Engbsh colony, Mr.  , and
went as near Ephesus as the train could take us, and
even three mbes further with the stoker on his engine,
till the rails came to an end, when we scrambled up
a stony hib, and saw the distant plain, almost fancy
ing we saw some of the ruins, but the broiling heat
and evening fever dews prevented our going farther,
as we longed to do.
We had taken third class tickets at the station,
thinking thus to see more of the natives ; but in spite
of that the English guard (he came from Norfolk, by
the way) insisted upon putting us into a first class carri
age. " That don't matter, sir, I ain't agoing to allow
them young ladies to go into third class carriages, which

ii Smyrna 6 1
is only fit for Turks and sich, there's no saying what
they mightn't catch." So we submitted, and found
afterwards it was quite the custom for Europeans to
take third class tickets and go first ! which made us
wonder less at the natives, who tried to bargain with
the ticket-sellers about the prices they were to give,
often wabdng away and expecting them to fobow and
accept their terms or make a fresh " bid." The rail
way was the last new toy of the Smyrniots, and the
harems were perpetually making excursions to the
station, where the ladies would seat themselves in a
line along the platform for haK a day, eating pome
granates seed by seed, and watching all the odd ways
of the Europeans, tib it was time to go home again,
when they were packed bke so many bundles in a
kind of open horse-box, laughing and shrieking with
debght. The railway was a failure for goods traffic,
the camel-drivers not seeing the fun of coming all the
way from the interior to a lonely station, and losing the
grand amusement of a few days in Smyrna. So they
declined going at all unless they went all the way ;
and used to tramp on and on, by the side of the rabs,
in almost unbroken strings, going and coming, the
strange beasts and their drivers looking superciliously
and without astonishment at the fussy, puffing, rushing
thing as it passed by them.
Another curious inhabitant of Smyrna is the
chameleon, which may be seen darting over any old
wall or heap of stones in search of flies ; but it becomes
very stupid and slow in captivity. One was given to
me, which afterwards died at Athens, and was buried
in the Acropobs. While at sea I used to catch flies
for it ; at the sight of one it would open its mouth

62 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
very wide and very slowly take it in ; after a sufficient
while I offered another, and again it opened its mouth
slowly and wide, when the first fly would walk out
again ! It was too bmp and depressed to swabow its
food, poor thing, and died of starvation diet ; but it
had not lost the power of changing its colour — black
as coal on the dirty floor, straw colour in its basket.
Ab were sorry to steam out of that lovely bay, but
we soon got among the Greek islands, bare stony rocks,
whose very names raised my father's spirits, for he had
pictured them all to himself years ago, and his head
was full of their legends. At Syra all passengers
stayed a night and changed ships, but it was too rough
to land for so short a time, and my father's notion
of " getting out of the town " would not have been a
quick process there, where the rock is as steep as a
sugar-loaf, and completely covered with flat-topped
white houses with windmills dotted about all round
instead of trees. The colours of the sea were exqui
sitely clear and pure ; and shoals of porpoises were
gambolling round us, rolling over and over, making
high jumps into the air, and then gbding in again so
gently as hardly to raise a splash. An old Scotchman
and his servant amused us much. They had been the
same round we had, but had seen bttle but one another
all the way ; bving as " Scotchmen should bve," never
talking foreign tongues, nor eating foreign dishes, and
their watches stib went as they went at home, which
was the only place where they kept good time. They
did not bebeve in any foreign time which did not
agree with their own watches, made by the best makers
in Edinburgh, and they did not intend to put them out
to suit the stupid lazy habits of foreigners !

n Athens 63
We left Syra at nine, and reached the Piraeus at
sunset, under a dull cloudy sky. JEgina showed well,
with its purple cone temple crowned, and there was
just bght enough to see the distant Parthenon as we
entered the port. As regards the shores of classic
Attica, which we had just toiled past for three hours,
since passing Sunium, it was all barren, no vegetation,
no signs of inhabitants showed themselves ; we met
not a dozen boats after leaving Syra till we reached
the crowded emporium of the Piraeus. Several men-of-
war were anchored in its classic waters, carrying flags
of all nations, and many small boats of altogether
a British character. At last we were landed, and
(bebeve it, ye gods of Homer !) packed into an old-
fashioned hackney-coach, driven by a man in a fez,
who stopped to drink only once in the five miles of
bad road, and finally set us down at a very German
hotel, close to the stbl more German Palace of King
Otho. Athens is not large ; my father and myself walked
ab round it before breakfast the next morning, but we
agreed that it was one of the few places whose beauty
and interest far exceed its reputation. The modern
town, almost a vibage, half Greek houses, half German,
with shutters to all the windows ; the big palace
standing among trees, palms, and garden ground which
had cost an endless amount of money to irrigate and
keep green, but which seemed almost an impertinence
just under the venerable Acropolis. I had never
dreamt of the lovebness of the sunrise and sunset
reflections on their smooth rocks and golden-tinted
marble ruins ; they were positively dazzling. The
temples themselves are now known to every one from

64 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
photographs and from the various models scattered
over the world, and would require the knowledge of
an architect and of a classical poet together to
describe, but if one place only in the whole world
could be visited, I should say "Go.. to Athens," and
live on its remembrance ab the rest of your bfe.
We stayed only three weeks, sketching hard half of
the time, and if we produced but poor imitations of
the original glories, we learnt at least from such close
study to estimate the more their marvellous forms and
pure colouring. Every day after the first was sunny ;
we had the most charming of guides in Mr. Finlay, who
had spent the chief part of his long bfe in Greece,
and had written there the history of its Middle Ages.
One night we had tea in his house, when his Armenian
wife sang to us some Turkish songs, making us remain
in one room while she walked about and sang in the
adjoining one, — as she said the sight of us made her
shy. Her history is told in About's famous book, La
Greece Contemporaine, — how Mr. Finlay when a young
sailor had fallen in love with her sister at Varna (I
think), and when his ship was about to sab made her
promise to have herself packed in a box, and be put
on board unknown to her famby; but at the last
moment her courage failed her, and this sister volun
teered to take her place. The poor young man,
though greatly disgusted at the change, felt he was
bound in honour to marry her, and not to send her
back to her angry parents, — and they seemed to have
got on very web together after all. But she could
never endure to go with him to England. She said
the moths would get into her carpets if she left them,
and those carpets were the pride of her heart.

ii Athens 65
Another friend was a fine old Greek admiral, who
delighted in talking of a visit, he had once paid
to England many years before, where he was much
feted and admired in his Albanian costume by the
great, ladies. The old Duchess of St. Albans had
asked him K the Greeks were not great thieves ?
He answered that he had been watching her Grace's
diamonds all the evening admiringly, and longing to
steal them. " If you do," she said, " I shall be well
content to see them in such hands, and I hope you
will bring them to Hoby Lodge, where it wbl give me
much pleasure to entertain you as long as you bke to
stay." Pretty speeches ! I wondered if great people
make such nowadays ? We also met that old
American hero of the Greek war, General Church,
who said he stib rode down to the Piraeus every morn
ing to bathe, but that recently the sharks had taken
to frequenting the harbour, and had made it dangerous.
Mr. and Mrs. Hbl we also met, who had come to
Athens before there was a single stone house there.
These good American Missionaries had done more
than most to civilise the people by their admirable
teaching and example.
One day we rode to the ancient fortress of Phyle,
which is built of huge unmorticed stones, on the top
of a considerable hib, having glorious views over the
GuK of Corinth and Bay of Salamis, with a foreground
of small stunted turpentine pines, even then being
gashed and tortured for their hearts' blood. Half-way
down in a crack of the rock was a monastery, partly
hobowed out and partly hanging to the cliff, with
masses of arbutus in full fruit along the sides of the
little stream which trickled down from the almost

66 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
dried-up spring. The monks gave us baskets of the
ripe berries with delicious honey ; the former when fully
ripe are not unlike strawberries, and refreshing enough
in a hot climate.
Another day we went with two friends in a small
sabing boat to iEgina, taking five hours to go there
and only two to return, flying like the wind with the
great sail almost resting on the water, not wholly
comfortable to those unaccustomed to Greek boats
and squalls ; but our captain had the rope end twisted
round his great toe, and was quite up to his work,
only laughing at our fears. The temple of iEgina is
of a coarse gray bmestone, it is 300 years older than
the Parthenon, and its architecture is heavy and
barbaric, in character with those sculptured figures
from its pediment we remembered at Munich, which,
in point of art, are as inferior to the Elgin marbles as
the temple is to that of Pabas Athene. But it made
a fine picture standing out against a marvellous sunset
sky of red and purple, to 'which a great round Ml
moon succeeded, and sent her long reflections over the
ruffled sea, as our boat flew along over its surface.
The temple occupies the summit of a height, twenty ¦
minutes cbmb from the- shore, and looks proudly
towards the country whose supremacy it successfully
defied for many years, till the Persian triumphs made
the Athenian Acropolis master of the Greek world.
* Travebing about Greece was so unsafe then that
Sir Thomas Wyse advised us not to attempt any other
excursions, even to Thermopylae, so we steamed away,
close under the mountains of the Morea, to Sicily, and
through the Straits of Messina, with snow-capped
Etna gloriously clear all day, its zones of vegetation

Nismes 67

and forest and every crack defined on its surface.
Only those who have been shut up for a week in a
steamer can reabse the debght of landing and wander
ing in beautiful gardens, among the sweetest of orange
flowers, citrons, heliotropes, roses, and carnations, or on
the scrubby hill-sides full of lavender, rosemary, and
other shrubs, and oyer terraces of obves and figs, for
as usual our object on landing was to get " out of the
town." A rough sea carried us through the straits between
Sardinia and Corsica, and quite near Caprera, the home
of that most unselfish among modern heroes — Garibaldi.
We landed at Marsebles, and steamed on to Nismes,
through the craggy olive -clothed plain of Provence.
Low bmestone hbls and rocky cliffs in all directions,
fertbe throughout with vines, mulberries, and abun
dance of the ordinary Levant pine, as well as a few
stone pines ; occasional tracts of sterile, stony, almost
African desert, the so-cabed Camargue; picturesque
crags crowned with castles, or rocks resembling them,
scattered about, — this is the landscape of Provence.
We were anxious to see the Eoman amphitheatre and
Maison Carre after our late visit to Athens, and found
them in their way quite as perfect : doubtless also
better known to tourists, being so much nearer home,
— which we reached in a few days, to begin the usual
festivities at Hastings Lodge.
General and Mrs. Sabine, with Mr. and Mrs.
Headlam, spent their Christmas with us, and had
hardly left before my father was seized with an attack
of congestion of one lung. A large dinner to the
Mayor and Corporation had to take place without him ;
he would not hear of its being put off, so his friends

68 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Mr. Headlam and his wife kindly stopped on to help
to entertain them. For three long weeks the dear
bfe hung on a thread, and I only left his room for
three hours' rest, from two till five every morning, when
our old housekeeper, Mother Bunfield, relieved me, as
he had to be fed every two hours to counteract the
enormous quantity of tartar emetic our clever doctor
was giving him, enough to kill a horse, he said ; it was
a new way then of treating the disease, and it suc
ceeded admirably. His old dog lay outside his door by
day and night, and would not be moved.
The old lady who helped me to nurse him was a
pecubar character. - She was a Eoughamite, and entirely
devoted to the squire and ab his family, and had been
in and out of our house, fibing odd gaps in the house
hold, as long as I can remember. She was under five
feet high, with a frightful temper, and quarrelled with
every one. Her husband, whom she called " the old
man," was a picture of meekness and benevolence, and
looked after the garden at Eougham. For some years
she acted as cook when we were at the flat during the
London season (our quietest time), and it was a joke
with my sister and our cousin Sarah to go and see
me order dinner. " What shall we have to-day, Mrs.
Bunfield ? " — " What you please, my dear." — " Shall we
have a beef pudding ? " — " No, my dear, you can't have
no beef to-day." — " Cutlets ? " — " No, my dear, you
can't have them because of the stove." At last :
" What can we have ? " and the invariable answer
came, " I was thinking you would like to have a nice
shoulder of mutton." Of course we had it, and it became
somewhat monotonous day after day, with apple turn
overs to follow, varied by gooseberry fool and rhubarb

At Home 69

(stewed walking-stick, we called it) in their season.
This tiny old woman was a powerful virago, who in
her frequent rages spared not her master any more
than her kitchen-maids. Once, hearing the sounds of
an extra row in the kitchen, my father wabted in to
see what was going on. As he stood meekly at the
door, waiting his chance to get a word in, she suddenly
turned round upon him, arms akimbo, eyes flaming,
and remarked : " And there you stands and says
nothin' ! " Yet she loved him, but it was " her^way."
During the short Hastings winters my father had
a queer fancy for importing foreigners as temporary
servants. Gaspard Delmonte from Macugnaga; Uccetta,
the landlord of the Fobello hotel in Val Mastalone ;
and later on Carlo Marato from the Lake of Como.
They answered well for the time, being good tempered
and always obliging, and they were glad to go home
to manage their own mountain inns when we went up
to the small flat in Victoria Street for the London
season. With these North Itaban cooks the ordering of
dinner became sometimes an anxious matter; it had in
any case to be done by the aid of a dictionary. Once
my father went down to tell Uccetta there was
company for dinner, and more would be wanted than
had been at first ordered ; so in the evening two legs
of mutton appeared in one dish, and everything else
was doubled in the same proportion. Hares and
rabbits always appeared at table lying on their backs
in the middle of the dish, their legs kicking in the
air. He loved to adorn his sweet dishes with mottoes
and fantastic devices, and to send up game birds
dressed in their own natural feathers. This meek giant

70 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
would sometimes be found crying and wringing his
hands at the stubborn incapacity of his Engbsh
kitchen-maid, but on the whole he got on excebently
well by dumb show, and was a favourite with all the
household. Uccetta did more of the work himself than English
chefs usually do, cleaning his own stove and even the
kitchen windows, and declaring there were too many
femmine about the premises. He arrived from the
Alps with various mysterious bags stuffed into his
trunk containing juniper-berries and mountain herbs
of unknown sorts, with which he imparted Italian
flavourings to English dishes. Meanwhbe; at home, his
pretty wKe Maddalena attended to her guests (few in
winter), and looked after everything, indoors and out,
dressed in a bloomer costume of blue serge trousers
and very short petticoat, both turned up with red, a
red handkerchief tied over her head, turban-fashion,
and with a ruff round her neck. Such is the universal
costume of the Val Mastalone, and the reason the
women have adopted it is, that the men are in the habit
of wandering over the world to seek their fortunes as
cooks, leaving the women to cultivate then- small farms,
which are generally at an angle of 45° at least. They
also mount the trees (ash or alder), and cut down the
branches and leaves for their cattle and goats to feed
on, their sensible costume enabling them to climb
almost with the ease of the latter animals. When the
men have made a fortune as cooks they generally
return to their native valley, begin building a large
house, and die before it is finished : and their successors
leave it standing as it is and start afresh again, so that
these Piedmontese valleys are full of ruined or haK-

At Home ji

bubt houses, and of brave Amazon-seeming women,
whose appearance is apt to startle the occasional
tourist coming over the passes from more prosaic
Switzerland. Our other Piedmontese servant, Gaspard Delmonte,
afterwards assisted on the occasion of my sister's
marriage, but had the church-door shut in his face
by the beadle, who thought him only an intrusive
"foreigner." "The water did come into mine eyes,"
he said afterwards, describing his disappointment ;
and, the whole show having been marshalled and
tyrannised over by our grand aunt, Lady Waldegrave,
I found it hard to forgive her this churlishness of her
obsequious myrmidons, though I did not resist, when
afterwards at the wedding-breakfast, she insisted, first
on taking "the Duke" into breakfast, and then on
herseK standing up to make the first speech and
propose the health of the bride and bridegroom,
leaving to my father and me quite the back seats at
our own table. We were used to it, and indulged the
old lady, as it pleased her more than it hurt us. She
had been Pope in a small sphere all her life.
The old days of Hastings are long past, and there
is now scarcely any one living who remembers them.
But my aunt could remember the time when her
father was rector of the two old churches in the snug
vabey between its two hbls, and when her first
husband, Mr. Milward, was Squire of the parish
and a despotic magistrate, without whose leave no
dog might bark. There were whispers of various
profitable smuggbng transactions abowed to pass by
the authorities at that period, when the most respect
able looked with kindly leniency on the trade. No

72 Recollections of a Happy Life chap, n
one smuggles now. It is no longer worth while.
Even the fishing, the great trade of old Hastings, is a
half-dying industry, while the big formless town of
fashionable lodging-houses to the westward grows and
grows, and is the only Hastings this generation knows.
Our aunt's old house, the Mansion, stbl remains un
changed in its sheltered nook beneath the hill, and
summer after summer the great creamy magnolias unfold
and fade again among their shiny leaves upon its ugly
red-brick front. But all else is changed, and (may she
never know it !) a Catholic poet inhabits that gloomy
old house, sacred erewhbe to Protestant tea-parties,
for she was a stern evangelical, and almost on the
site of her stable-yard an immense barnlike Eoman
Catholic Cathedral has been erected, which stretches
aggressively across the picturesque valley where she
once reigned over church and people.
Do ghosts walk, I wonder ? Surely this would be
provocation enough, even in the nineteenth century !

CHAPTEE III
ADRIATIC AND SYRIA
1865
Our Egyptian journey, long talked of, came off at last,
and it was a misfortune that brought it to pass ! At
the General Election in July 1865 my father lost his
seat, being turned out by George Waldegrave, with a
majority of just nine votes : after the first vexation
we turned our thoughts to utilising the unlooked-for
leisure, and started at once for Switzerland.
Our first halt was at Brunnen, on the Lake of
Lucerne. After a few days there we drove up the
vabey to Muotta, and took a day's rest in the quietest
of wooden inns, sleeping on sacks of beech leaves,
extremely clean and sweet, but apt to get into a hard
hole before morning. After that we walked over the
Pragel Pass to Vorauen in the Klonthal, where there
was an old-fashioned farm-house inn whose owners
treated us bke friends. Here we settled for a whole
week ; the meadows around were sweet with flowers,
and below was a clear little lake, into which the giant
cliffs of the Glarnisch dipped, to be again doubled by
its reflection. They gave a great idea of the height
of the mountain so close above our heads. In the
evening the clouds, which wove themselves in and out

74 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
of the seeming cracks above, showed what great valleys
these really were, and the pure cool air put renewed
bfe into us day by day, after the worries and heat we
had lately endured at home.
The old landlord might have been a model for a
Hofer or a Tell, and was usually in the highest spirits,
but soon after our arrival a pet cow died from eating
too much of the fresh green grass, and then the whole
famby went into mourning, and did nothing but shake
their heads and say, " Aeh Gott ! " The daughter was
very pretty and nice, and did ab the waiting, sitting
down between whiles to knit and gossip with the
guests. She said the cow would not have died if the
Jcnecht had not gone away dancing last Sunday (my
Aunt Waldegrave would have said it was a judgment
on them that such wickedness should have been
possible), but when the old farmer was scolded by his
wKe for not looking after the man, he said she might
as well scold him for not looking after the cow, as he
was not dancing. There were no guests but ourselves
bving at Vorauen, but on Saturday about a thousand
people came up after work was over, and slept about
higgledy-piggledy in the cow-sheds and hay-lofts, and
afterwards spent ab their Sunday scrambling about
over the hibs, filling pails and baskets full of wild
strawberries, raspberries, bilberries, etc., etc. They
walked home in the evening, singing and yodeling till
the hibs echoed again; such excursions did them a
world of good, and sent them back fresh for their
factory work in the town. There were other Sunday
visitors, who drove out in their own waggons and
gigs, and made the place most unquiet, but we saw
no drunkenness ; they sang part-songs and danced in

"1 Glarus 75
the shed outside. All were gone by six in the evening,
and left us sitting on the bench outside the door with
the family party, lamenting the death of the cow in
all peace and comfort.
The eldest son of the house had been eighteen
years in Aleppo and Bagdad, as agent for the cotton
and other manufactures of Glarus and Switzerland, and
had come home a comparatively rich man. He gave
my father many hints about our future journey to the
East. He said he had ridden thousands of miles there,
and never lost anything except one of his horse's tails,
which was cut off in some wild camping-place at night.
He brought up a beautiful Arab for me to see and
ride, and I had a canter over the meadow sitting
sideways on bis man's saddle, but in trying to stop it I
lost my balance and fell, and the pretty creature stood
stib beside me to let me climb up again, and brought
me home as gently as a lamb, or rather as only an
intelligent horse would, seeming to understand the
difficulties of my position. Another horse had been
given to our friend by some great Arab chief when he
left the country.
We afterwards spent some days in Glarus, which
interested my father as being the smallest independent
state in the world. It has its own little Parbament
and taxes, which are heavy, but it hoped in twenty
years to pay off its own debt for the great fire, roads,
etc., there being a capitation tax of two francs per
head, which pays all Government expenses ; a property
tax of two and a half per thousand, for roads and poor.
They have two poorhouses and large out-door rebef, and,
though the majority of the people are Protestants, they
abow the Eoman Cathobcs to worship in their churches

y6 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
at such hours as their own services are not going on.
The population of Glarus was about 20,000. The
precipices of the Glarnisch come sheer down to the
edge of the town at an angle of 70 or 80 degrees,
looking as if a snowball might be rolled off the eternal
glaciers on its top on to the green gardens of the town
beneath, and it was curious to have such a mountain
wibhin a few hours' climb to the summit on one side,
and a rabway station on the other, from whence one
could go straight by train to the British Channel.
Two hours drive took us up the Linththal to the
bleak little inn under the Todi. We climbed up to
the famous Pantenbriicke, which spans a chasm above
the torrent running 300 or 400 feet below, surging
through a crack not five yards across. A Berlin family
had started with us, but some way before we reached
the bridge the son declared himself schwindlich, and
turned back, leaving his old father and mother to
go on alone. Even close to Glarus the walks are
delightful. We went one morning up 3000 feet
before 12 o'clock breakfast, over a path smooth
enough for fine ladies' slippers, and obtained grand
views of the Todi and its snow saddle, as well as of
the compact little capital below, with its fields full
of freshly-dyed red pocket-handkerchiefs and turbans
for Eastern trade.
After leaving this nice place we skirted the lovely
lake of Wabenstadt, passed miles' of Indian corn,
potatoes, and reeds, and were at last set down at a
station in a marsh, which contained one woman, who
offered to fetch a carriage, tied a handkerchief over
her head, and disappeared among the bulrushes, to
reappear in a wonderfully short time with a nice

Feldkirch yy

carriage and two horses, which took us in ten minutes
to a lonely house in the marsh. Into this the driver
disappeared, and left us to broil for about three
quarters of an hour, grumbling in true English style
at the horrid waste of time, when the landlord again
appeared so beaming in his very best waistcoat, and
so content from his recent good dinner and liberal
abowance of wine, that all power of scolding was
driven out of us, and we were taken on ten minutes
farther to the ferry, where we had to get out and be
taken over in bits. After which we had another drive
of about five minutes, and were then set down at the
Austrian custom-house, where a snuffy old Beamter in
spectacles proceeded to copy the whole of our pass
ports into a book, complaining that strangers never
came that way (no wonder !). He then proceeded to
make as much fuss as possible over our luggage, and
my father's portmanteau was rather curiously packed.
It contained a tin washing-basin, tea-machine, fishing-
net, hammer, sugar, candles, books, bottle of ink, etc. ;
ab of which the old fogy fingered and growled over.
My father gave his help fivepence, he looked sheepish,
was called away, and came back discomfited, his chief
having transferred the miserable coin to his own
pocket. At last we got on to Feldkirch, an old world
town looking bke an illustration from Froissart, but
so full of black flies and soldiers that we went two posts
farther to Dalaas, a pretty country village with a clean
wooden inn, kept by a gossiping landlady with a fur
muff on top of her head. She had two pets, a cow
and a sheep, which came to the balcony when she cabed,
for bread, and the sheep wagged its tail for thanks
like a dog. I saw also there a dog which barked at me

7& Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
with an apple held in its mouth all the time; its
mistress told me it would not drop that apple even
for a bone till she gave it leave.
Crossing the Vorarlberg to Landeck, we went on
over the bare Finstermiinz to Mais, paying six shillings
each for thirteen hours of stellwagen, and the last stage,
from twelve tib seven, was done by one pair of horses
(steadby !). Now and then they stopped to eat hay,
but were never taken out of the shafts, and the next
morning the poor things were required to start back
again at 5 o'clock. We stopped for " a wash " at
Meran, and heard Haydn's mass on the Emperor's
birthday, with its usual accompaniment of cannon
outside, after which we were dragged' over the rather
uninteresting valley to Botzen, and took some walks
into that dolomite district which had lately been
much written up by Churchib and others. Those
mountains are to my thinking most outrageous freaks
of nature, twisted into all sorts of grotesque shapes,
and not only the peaks themselves but the roads and ,
stream-beds are all dazzling and colourless — most
unpleasant to the eyes at noonday, but gorgeous when
reflecting the skies of sunset and sunrise. The alps
between these peaks are particularly green and gay
with flowers; the people exceedingly sociable and
simple in their habits.
We started, with a wretched lad to carry our things,
and he took us to the chief guide of the district, a most
sprightly bttle man of five feet high, who strapped
our bags on his wooden frame with a flourish, saying
it required "knowledge and experience to do even
that well," and then tripped off with his load as K it
had been feathers. He was the sort of bttle old man

in St. Ulrich 79
that generally comes out of a hobow tree dressed all
in red in fairy tales, very intelligent and confiding in
his talk, but there was something no-canny in the
way he carried his load. Bad Eatzes was our first
halt, and was a horrid damp hole cut out of the fir
forest, with the Schlern so completely over our heads
that we could not even see it. The " bad " guests
were mostly of the lowest class ; they bathed eight in
one room in wooden coffins with lids, and just a hole
for their heads to come out of, with a towel to stop
the gap round their necks. The more genteel classes
find Eatzes langweilig, and divide their time between
some tubs on a pond (in which they push them
selves about with a spade for a paddle) and play
ing at tops on the dining-room table. I also found
Eatzes very cold, and damp, and tiresome, and was
glad when our bttle man led us out of it ; he himself
said nothing could induce him to stop another night
there — " no dancing, no nothing ! " We crossed the
lovely Seisser Alp, even then full of flowers in its
second crop of uncut hay, and descended to St. Ulrich,
in the Grodnerthal, a vibage inhabited by people who
spend their bves in cutting out wooden toys, rocking
horses, Noah's arks, jointed dobs of every size, as
well as crucifixes and other church decorations. They
begin to cut when they are four years old, and few
lose their fingers ; they are born carvers from the
beginning. The warehouses in that valley are a sight
worth seeing. We saw one packing case, nine feet by
five, containing some hundred thousand dobs' heads
going to England. What becomes of them all ulti
mately ? Are they burned or buried, or do babies eat
them ? Our little guide was a famous zither player,

80 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
and he brought some of his musical friends together,
and gave us a really good concert at St. Ulrich.
From thence we walked round the base of the
Langkofel, the Matterhorn of Tyrol ; across the Bren-
nerthal, and up the opposite side to Dreikirchen,
where there are three little chapels, and a three-gabled
Kur-haus fub of old women, one of whom was just
dead from having taken the milk cure just on the top of
the grape cure. There was no spare room, but some
talked of moving the body into one of the chapels, and
putting us three in its place, an arrangement we none
of us fancied. So after dinner we walked for another
four hours along a high but level path, having glorious
views across the Brenner vabey to the Schlern and
other dolomitic peaks, walking under shady trees and
through cheerful meadows all the way to Klobenstein.
The inn here is situated on the Eitter Alp, and is a
most enjoyable place to stay at : it is near the famous
and curious earth pyramids of Botzen. These were
originally caused by the washing away through long
ages of the softer sob, all except certain portions
which were protected from the rain by big boulder
stones shaped like umbrellas ; and these now rest on
the tops of apparent obelisks of hard earth from ten
to fifty feet high, — a grotesque assemblage of petrified
giants. We returned to Botzen and on to Trent, a fine old
town surrounded by towers, fortifications, and horned
battlements, in a fertile and feverish plain, with a richly
supplied market, full of fish, fruit, and frogs, mosquitoes
and soldiers too abounding, and the latter looking far
too German for such an Itaban city ; noble old churches
too, with curiously twisted and knotted pillars resting

iii Setie Commune 81
on the backs of strangely sculptured beasts holding
smaller beasts between their paws, and all of fine
marble, bke the churches themselves.
We took an einspanner and drove through the
Val Sugano to Borgo, where there is a great silk factory.
The master showed us the whole process from the
beginning : winding off the silk from the cocoons has to
be done in a stifling atmosphere. Many of his moths
had died a few years before of the usual disease, and
he had had the spirit to send to Japan for eggs, and
was then reaping the benefit of his enterprise, for they
had answered perfectly. This descent into Italy is very
striking, bare dolomite crags above, and corn, vines, and
tobacco on terraces below, the latter crop being a prero
gative of the K. K. Government. There are also some
lovely bmestone caves and springs in the lower part of
the valley, fringed with maiden-hair ; the streams which
issue from these are powerful enough to turn paper
mbls close to their source, but are soon afterwards lost
in the Brenta. It would be a great possible blessing to
the city of Bassano K these could be utilised by means
of an aqueduct to supply the city ; the work would
not be over costly, as the distance is small, and the
fall very great : at present the people have to carry
up every drop of water in pabs from the river below.
There is a curious settlement of Germans on the
tableland above, which is called the Sette Commune ;
they are said to talk the old language of the Nibelungen
Lied, and never to have mixed with the races about
them : there seemed to be no small paths up to the
place, and only two vabeys leading down from it. The
old towers of Bassano looked grand against a golden
sky as we drove through the richly-cultivated fields,
Q

82 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the loaded vines trained in festoons from tree to tree,
generaby a pollard maple or the white mulberry, on
whose leaves the sbkworms are fed, while pumpkins
and Indian corn covered the ground between. A
lovely garden tempted us in the next day, and I asked
and obtained leave to sketch there, and the gardener
told us the daughter of the house had married one of
the ministers of England (we found out afterwards
he meant our old friend John Ball). Soon afterwards
the owner of the garden came out, with servants
carrying an easel and artist umbreba, which he begged
me most kindly to use, and we were so vexed not to
have remembered in time who he was, but could only
return his courteous kindness with thanks, and try to
do justice to his beautiful garden, with one of the old
city towers covered with chmbing plants in its midst,
and the blue mountains beyond.
We drove on to Padua, thence to Venice and
Trieste, and by steamer again to Poki, of which we had
had a mere gbmpse on a former journey, but now
took leisurely, and made many sketches. It was sad,
however, to see such an interesting place sacrificed to
soldiers ; fifteen detached forts could be counted from
the hill behind the amphitheatre, and ab trees were
cut down from the once lovely shores of the bay ; the
streets swarmed with soldiers and trumpeters, who
were constantly practising in the amphitheatre, but
they were well discipbned and never came in our way.
It was lovely moonbght, and a perfectly smooth sea,
all the way between Pola and Zara, so that we could
sleep on deck, and not have to endure the purgatory
of the small crowded cabin below.
Zara was fub of market people and merchants,

iii Spalato 83
picturesquely dressed, with a great preponderance of
red amongst them ; the women were grand figures, with
red bodices and headgear, and some yards of iron-
studded leathern belts wound round their waists. The
Dalmatians seemed a very handsome race, and held
themselves beautifully upright, balancing their tubs of
wine on their heads, for at that time the vintage was
in full force, and the whole population appeared to be
employed in decanting the new wine from tubs in boats
to tubs on shore, everybody and everything was more
or less dyed with it ; men in turbans and petticoats
abounded, and the whole scene had an Oriental look.
The fish-market was full of John-Dories, with monstrous
horny spines down the whole length of their sides, of
common whiting, red and gray mullet and sepias in
profusion, with the usual frutte de mare or echinus.
We took a whole day steaming on to Spalato, a city
bubt out of the ruins of Diocletian's Palace, old arches
and columns in every street and corner. But the gem
here is the Temple of Venus, in the centre of it ab, now
cabed the Duomo, and fitted up by the old Venetians
in the grotesque style of St. Mark's, the Christian and
heathen work both equaby fine in their different ways ;
the octagon sheb of the temple is quite perfect, and
the doorways, pillars, and friezes are of the richest
possible carving, and as fresh and pobshed as if finished
yesterday. A Venetian clock tower had been put
together out of Eoman stones, and Egyptian sphinxes
and other barbaric spobs adorn the arcades outside
the Duomo, all collected and brought there by the
Emperor Diocletian. We drove five mbes into the
country to Salona, the old city, where we found mbes of
scattered ruins amongst the vineyards and olive gardens.

84 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The vintage was then going on, and wbd men in turbans,
with huge pistols and daggers in their belts, gave us the
most debcious blue grapes, as they were carrying their
wine in goatskins on little donkeys to market. There
is a river of the purest water running away to waste
into the sea close by, while bits of the old aqueduct
remaining suggest some talk of repairing it for present
utility, but funds and energy are wanting.
A festa was being held whbe we were at Spalato, to
celebrate the election of the mayor, — a would-be patriot
who had made his fortune in a bubding company, which
had improved the town by erecting a theatre large
enough to contain all the population, rags and all,
forgetting that there were neither drains nor water-
pipes. Every drop had to be bought, and brought a
long way by men on their shoulders or heads, and
enough money was spent in this way every year to
repair Diocletian's aqueduct ; nevertheless the favourite
mayor had a great fuss' made about him, and the whole
front of the palace town was festooned with sweet
Greek pine and myrtle, and enbvened by coloured
lamps, fireworks, and music ; hundreds of country
people came in with turbans and patched pantaloons,
and curious daggers and pistols stuck in their bright
coloured scarf belts ; while the upper classes dressed
themselves up in bonnets, chimney-pot hats, and the
usual atrocities of civilisation. We had two rooms in
a private house at Spalato, and took our meals at a
trattoria, in the same room with the Austrian officers
(the hotel being said to be too bad to lodge in), and
though I was the only lady at those eating-rooms
nothing could exceed the quiet courtesy of two white-
coated officers, who never took the least notice, or

iii Ragusa 85
stared at us as strangers, only leaving the best table
always for our use.
Our steamer stopped at the island of Lissa, and
some other ports on its way to Gravosa, where we
landed soon after daylight in a landlocked bay, which
looked bke a salt lake, and mounted to the top of a
low ridge, from whence we looked down on the city
of Eagusa, standing out into the sea bke Monaco,
surrounded by fortified towers and almost cyclopean
walls. These are built on the edge of perpendicular
cliffs, honeycombed with caves and hobowed out by the
continual wash of the sea, whose colours are as varied
and debcate as those on a mother-of-pearl shell.
Such a glorious spot, it reminded me of one of those
old towns in Albert Diirer 's backgrounds. The walls
were so strong that though an earthquake had once
shaken down all the houses they had remained
uninjured to the present day ; the city had been soon
rebubt with stately marble palaces in rectangular
streets, but their owners then took to building beauti
ful summer villas outside on the hbl, which tempted
the Montenegrins to come over their borders and burn
them ab down. Between the ruthlessness of its neigh
bours and the frequent earthquakes, Eagusa has had
a hard struggle for existence, but there are stib some
7000 inhabitants packed within those tremendous
wabs, which have only two gates, one approached by
a flight of steps from the land, the other opening on
to the sea. The shores all around are fub of ins
. and outs, islands and rocks, and are most picturesque
everywhere, and the people very kind. One day, as I
was sketching near a garden gate, the lady of the
house came out with a tempting little tray of coffee,

86 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
cakes, and fruit in her hands, and sat by me while I
enjoyed them and finished my sketch. English people
had a good character in Eagusa, and our good Consul,
Mr. Paton, was much to be thanked for making their
name respected. He took us many expeditions about
the country round ; most of it consists only of rocks
with a sprinkling of caruba trees and Levant pines,
except near springs or artificial irrigation. At Canozza
a noble fountain rushes out ; and two giant plane trees,
measuring twenty-nine feet in circumference at six
feet from the ground, have gathered quite a large
village under their shade.
We passed a night in the Bocche di Cattaro, and
wished it had been day, for it was a wonderful place,
hanging on a rocl-j at the foot of a steep mountain : a
terrible zigzag road leads up its almost perpendicular
sides for over 4000 feet to Montenegro, and it is the
only sea outlet of that country, so is naturaby a source
of perpetual discord between Greece and Austria
for its possession. The beauties of Como and the
Bosphorus are said to be both combined in the
winding channel which leads to Cattaro, and the
height of the hbls on each side looked quite awful in
the semi-darkness as we steamed up and down it. At
Budia, where we left the last Austrians with their
famibes, we seemed to be parting from civibsation,
and resigned ourselves to the sole company of our
very intelbgent young Hungarian captain and his
most sagacious poodle dog for the rest of the voyage ;
the former talked every kind of language and talked
continually, the latter did everything but talk, so that
our party was very complete in its way.
We put in at three Albanian ports to take in mails,

in Corfu 87
but did not land, and thought ourselves excessively
ill used when we arrived at Corfu and found ourselves
bable to eleven days of quarantine ; I am sorry to say
my father lost his temper. He had taken his ticket
all the way to Beyroot, and now was not allowed to
change ships and go on, just because the Corfu people
wished to spite the Turks and make something out of
the compulsory board of any strangers they could catch,
the whole island since England gave it up being more or
less bankrupt. My father sent a letter to the Consul-
General, who was in England and could not answer,
but his sub, Baron D'E., came out to us after six hours
of consideration about it, and found my father in a
state of bottled indignation that was truly alarming.
He made him a speech over the bulwarks, which was
not complimentary to the Greeks and their ways, the
captain saying " hear, hear ! " and the poodle flapping
its tab approvingly at intervals. The poor Baron
became intensely civil, and offered us his own yacht to
pass our imprisonment in : our time in it was not pure
pleasure at first, as it was about the size of a Hastings
fishing-boat, and robed at anchor considerably, the
crockery rattbng and windows tumbling in, while the
atmosphere under the town wall amid all the drainage
was not invigorating.
After a whbe we were moved out to the harbour
of the lazaretto; this rather increased our anger by
making us think we were to be landed in that odious
place, but we had merely shifted anchor and quarters,
and were in the best of air and a quiet sea under the
shelter of- the island ; I began to have a wash of three
weeks' accumulation of clothes, — no joke, whbe my
father smoked a long pipe, and watched our new maid

88 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Francesco up to his elbows in soap-suds. The latter
was a most brisk little man with very hairy legs, no
shoes or stockings, a head like a mop, and very
ragged shirt. He " did " the rooms much more effect
ively than our Elizabeth at home, letting himself in
and out through the sky bght, and putting every
thing tidy, rolling the bedclothes into a bundle before
breakfast, which he also cooked himself. He had a
wife and a bella piccola, who came to the corner of
the town-wall to look at him several times a day, and
they habooed a few words to one another in an un
known tongue. He was so fond of doing this that I
asked him what he would do now we were removed
three miles off from the town. He said he always
thought, when he left them, Would they die ? if so
he Would be very sorry : K they lived he would be
very glad, — he could do nothing else.
Five other cutters kept us company, full of fellow-
sufferers. They had talked with the people on shore
at the other harbour, so had been sent to join us. All
these vessels were kept well apart, so that no risk of
infection could ensue from touching one another.
One day great events happened : first a dead calm
came on ; then the doctor was rowed out to inspect us.
He had odd eyes looking across one another, badly
fitting teeth, and a most villainous grin. He kept
his boat at a safe distance, and read aloud an Itaban
letter from the Baron about the extraordinary exer
tions he had made for moving us here ; my father
would not understand, so he fetched a half Engbshman
in his boat to interpret ; and then the Austrian Lloyd
agent appeared, with an honest-looking head on his
shoulders, and the opportunity was too good to be lost.

ni Corfu 89
My father stepped gracefully on the rim of our tub, and
grasping the ropes in one hand, left the other free to
see-saw up and down in the true M.P. style, and said,
" Signor Direttore," the signor took off his hat and
said "commanda," with an extra squint; then my
father waved his hand again, saying, " Signor Direttore,
j'ai voyage" con mia figba in tutta la terra, and, hang
it, teb him I never was so shamefully treated ! "
Upon that I chimed in, and we both gave it to the
ancient Greek, who seemed to expect it, and only
squinted the more blandly, and hoped I would walk
as much as I liked on the island, with as patronising
an air as the Duke of Devonshire might have used
when placing Chatsworth at my disposition. The
Austrian Consul was much amused, and advised us
when we did escape to go straight to Constantinople,
and. avoid quarantine at Syra, but my father said
Delos was the Greek centre of the world, and we
should not be in an out-of-the-way place there at all.
There was some amusement but much weariness
in that smab boat, and I felt my brains becoming
angular from the constant knocks on the head, there
being but few places on board one could stand upright
in ; I fancied perhaps that was the reason Francesco
had never had his hair cut, but used it as a pad to
keep the ceibng off his skull. What toes he had too !
He would catch hold of the ropes with them bke a
monkey;, and his poor little 'spine got so tired with
stooping below that he used to stand at rest on deck,
as if preparing to make a somersault backwards in
order to straighten himself, as one reverses the rolling
of a sheet of music paper. A Greek dragoman named
Matteo from the hotel used to bring out provisions

90 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
every day at fancy prices, and there were some books
and tracts on board of a dismal character. " Are you
prepared to die ? " was the title of one, and I remember
thinking it added insult to injury in our case, es
pecially combined with the big pumpkins and water
melons they sent us. We had an official of the
quarantine to watch, us, who followed my father
about like a shadow if ever he landed on that wretched
island, to prevent his speaking to any of the poor
prisoners there; he was not beautiful in his worn-
out green uniform. Francesco hated him as much
as we did, and enjoyed seeing me give him a row one
day. He turned green with fear at my queer rowing,
and I did my best to upset him but could not do it
without personal risk to myself, and had no fancy for
becoming shark's food. One day the squinting doctor
came out and told us how much a certain old Lord
Guilford had done for the island, proving again the use-
lessness of relations, or why did not the grateful islanders
let us out ? They did so at last, but contrived that we
should be just too late to start in the next steamer to
Beyroot, and we had a whole week to wait for the
fobowing one. It is not a great hardship to stop in
beautiful Corfu, but we felt we had been trapped, and
there was something melancholy in seeing the place
going so fast to ruin, — we had to drive out into the
fields to avoid the holes in the once excellent roads,
gardens were neglected, houses shut up ; it did not
pay to bring the abundant fruits and vegetables to
market, so people told us, now there were so few
buyers. The damp heat of October was depressing, and we
never felt really free of quarantine till we steamed

ni Zante 91
away from Corfu in the good ship Germania, in which
I, as the only lady, had quite a grand suite of rooms
to myself. We touched at Cephalonia and saw the
famous mills on the beach whose wheels are turned
by the sea waves, which enter and disappear into caves
beyond. Also at Zante we stopped, left mails, and
took in passengers, and were always in sight either of
some island or of the Morea tib we were again in
quarantine at Syra, but this time for twenty-eight
hours only, in our own comfortable ship, anchored
outside the harbour. It was difficult to discover
rhyme or reason in those Greek quarantines. They
refused to receive any of the merchandise on board
because it came from Trieste, and it had to be taken
on to Constantinople and back again whence it came.
Another sister ship came from Candia, and all the
passengers were ordered into the lazaretto, the ship
was to stay at anchor five days and then to be con
sidered clean and land her goods. The two captains
were old friends, so they consoled themselves by shouting
confidential abuse of the Greeks through long speaking-
trumpets from the tops of their respective paddle-
boxes. Our captain was one of those big good-natured
Itaban grown-up children one feels incbned to pat or
stroke like some purring cat ; when happy he would
walk round and round the saloon, playing softly on a
violin, all by himself; and then he would get into
fearful rages on deck with ab the sailors, flinging his
arms about like an amiable old windmbl ; sometimes
he put on an old wide-awake and trotted round
and round his raised gallery, with hands behind his
back, bke an Englishman in his garden at home.
The whole ship was an agreeable contrast to the den

92 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
of half-starving thieves we had lately escaped from,
the crew ab looked so honest and practical.
Syra, with its steps for streets and pyramid of
white houses, gbttered through a blue haze of heat
just as it did when we passed before, and at night it
looked like the back of some huge matchbox, on which
giants struck their matches, the lights were so white
and phosphorescent. They kept us fifty hours there,
and the confidences through the speaking-trumpet got
louder and louder, the violin was locked up, and we
had the beginning of a mutiny among the men over
their soup ; then came the direct boat from Trieste,
some hundreds of odd people were packed into ours,
and we started, and by the time we left Chios our
deck was a perfect human museum. That island
looked lovely from the sea, covered as it was with
miles of garden-ground, filled principally with oranges,
lemons, and mastic trees (with which the Greeks
spoil their wine), but the sbly old Turks had read in
some newspaper that there was cholera in Trieste, and
they, bke the Corfiotes, would let no one land with
out eleven days quarantine. What a pity they ever
learned to read on that island ! Homer was born
there, they say.
The wife of the Austrian Consul had been sent to
some baths for the summer, and was told she would
die if she returned to Chios, but she said, " What good
to live away from husband and children ? " so she had
been put on board our ship at Syra very bl. I had
helped to take care of her, and got fond of the poor
delicate invabd, and now she must go to the lazaretto
for eleven days, and our doctor said would probably
not survive it. Our captain tried to persuade her to

iii Smyrna 93 ,
go on to Smyrna and return in another ship, thus
avoiding quarantine, but she feared more sea, and
preferred to land.
Smyrna looked very much like an old friend, and
every one there seemed pleased to see us again ; the
long strings of camels appeared to have been tramping
on continuously ever since our last visit — such noble
long-haired beasts, meek but obstinate, nothing stopped
or astonished them, though they did seem sometimes
to prick their ears at a railway whistle. They were
chiefly employed in bringing in cotton, together with
their old loads of figs and madder. The gossips of
Smyrna were much excited over a German Fraulein of
" a certain age " who had suddenly come amongst them,
and who was ambitious of becoming a second Ida Pfeiffer.
She wished to begin her adventures by a journey
overland to Constantinople — a road infested by all
kinds of robbers and wild tribes. She thought she
could ride it ab alone with a dragoman and a Turkish
dictionary ! I made friends with her, and found she
drew tolerably, and was a nice modest little woman,
but had bttle idea of the difference between the two
semi-civihsed ends of the expedition, — and the long
wide waste between them. Her ideas of teaching
herself deprivations were amusing. She was staying
in a rich luxurious famby in Smyrna, and insisted
on washing her own cuffs and cobars (only) herself —
scraping them with a penknife, — and living on bread
and onions. She would carry a big portfolio in one
hand, and a bag in the other, and walk through the
streets and bazaars at the rate of a Turkish express
train. Of course they thought her mad, and respected
her accordingly.

94 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
We went again to Ephesus, but the train only
allowed us three hours there, and as my father dared
not stay the night in such a feverish swamp, and the
ruins are much - scattered, one could see but little of
them in that short time. I painted one of the pillars,
probably from Diana's temple, now built into the ruined
mosque; the top of the capital had a. text from the
Koran, the capital itself was fine Corinthian work, the
shaft of Egyptian granite (probably from the original
and older temple) ; and the fig-tree climbing round it
was a good emblem of Nature, which confounds all
rebgious castes. The blue sky above, which had seen
and outlived them all, remained still as unfathomable
and incomprehensible to all. Near the caravan bridge
was a smab custom-house, with one black and two
white officers attached to it ; a stream of people went
in and out, standing stbl and holding their saddlebags
or bundles to be examined, all perfectly quiet and
placid, and far too hot for any expostulation, — wonder
ful living bundles of bright - coloured drapery and
fierce-looking weapons ; black cypress trees as back
ground, and strings of camels continually passing and
looking always the same, with their long shaggy coats,
jingbng bells, and dislocated movements.
Gas had been introduced into Smyrna since our
last visit, and we were no longer compebed to carry
paper lanterns after dark. The new railroad to
Magnesia was opened whilst we were there, and we
had gone to the station to see the train start, when a
man we had met on board the steamer, and whose
name we never made out, introduced us to all the
chief people, and one famby took us into their own
reserved carriage and adopted us for the day. Special

Magnesia 95

constables had been appointed for that occasion, prin-
cipaby chosen from the Gsabeg tribe (the greatest
thieves in Turkey), on the principle of " set a thief to
catch a thief." These men wore high sugar-loaf caps,
with dangles over their faces (bke Osiris the Egyptian
god), and huge belts stuck full of ab kinds of death
instruments, some of them highly ornamental. They
were a tall race, with some gigantic negroes among
them, and were said always to come to a bad end.
The engine was dressed with flowers, and every station
crowded with spectators. Magnesia is a grand-looking
town, containing 80,000 inhabitants and thirty-nine
mosques, the principal one is a noble building of white
marble, with crescents of pure gold on its domes, nest-
bng in a lovely garden of pomegranates, oranges, and
cypress trees. Our friend was sobcitor to the railway
company; he took us to the house of a rich Jew,
whose cause he had won, and who was overflowing
with gratitude and hospitabty. We were taken up to
a nest of little rooms at the top of the house, fur
nished with exquisite carpets and divans, having lovely
views of the mosques, gardens, and distant country. A
meal of native dishes was served to us by the famby,
headed by their grandmother, who had great black
circles painted round her eyes, rather too coarsely to
be improving to her beauty ; they gave us habobs and
paste, and a huge dish of hot angels' hair,1 for our
hostess had come of a Spanish race, and still retained
the habit of making it as web as other choice dishes of
her country ; the gourds she grew in her garden. She
was five feet high, and a perfectly round lump of fat ;
1 Angels' hair, a favourite Spanish preserve, made of a kind o
pumpkin.

96 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
her chest was uncovered down to the waist, with a pink
satin bodice, orange under-jacket, drab satin overcoat,
turned up with pink, and a wonderfully flowered
chintz dress, a purple velvet cap bound on her head
with an embroidered handkerchief, and long veil falling
behind of another flowered chintz such as we make
curtains of. Of course she had also diamond earrings,
gold chains, and yellow slippers ; she gave me continual
thumps of approbation on my back, with exclamations
of " bravo ! " over my sketch, much to the detriment of
the straight lines in its difficult architecture. She
had a daughter of twelve, dressed with the same sim
plicity, and already engaged to be married to one of
the rather unpleasant-looking Jews who were lounging
about. The city is finely situated at the foot of the hibs,
with abundant streams of water running through it ;
the bazaars are full of life. Horses were being tried
and sold in the ill-paved streets, flourishing their heads
and tabs, and seeming to care nothing for the stones :
the people were as yet unspoiled by Europeans, and
let us bnger in and out of their splendid mosques
without the least distrust. A good half of the popu
lation were at the rabway station, and the white-veiled
Mahometan women looked like big snowballs ; they
kept their faces honestly covered up, while the
Armenians and Jewesses made a great show of gaudy
colour. The Pasha sat in the middle of the platform,
with a sort of court round him, including the Arch
bishop ; all looked grave and unexcited, smoking
the pipe of peace. The contractor had given a great
dinner to all the principal officials and residents in
Smyrna, and they came back very merry, and cheered-

iii Smyrna 97
our Consul-General very heartily ; who had never been
seen without his official uniform, and was popularly
believed to sleep in it !
Our late captain and his two under-ofncers came
on shore on purpose to introduce us to the captain of
the ship we were to go on in, which they did as
" Monsieur my Lord et mees sa fille," without any
trouble about finding a name for us : but it was meant
most kindly, and had the effect of getting us well cared
for in the ship which took us out of the beautiful bay
of Smyrna next day. This ship was very large, with
the saloon raised above the deck, and an open deck
above that for the few first-class Europeans on board ; a
gallery ran all round it, covered with canvas, in which
the Turkish women were stowed side by side like horses
in a stable. The part at the end behind the wheel
was devoted in the daytime to the use of the family of
the Governor of Beyroot ; at night the precious beings
were locked into the ladies' cabin by the eldest son,
who put the key in his pocket, being the guardian of
his mamma and Co. I hoped the old lady never
inflicted grievous bodily injury on the latest acquisition
in a white sheet and large eyes, it must have been a
sad temptation when they were locked up together in
such close quarters. This son and heir was a most
bl-favoured young man, he wore a blac dressing-gown,
yebow boots, and no stockings, — light and airy alto
gether was his costume.
There was a colonel covered with orders, a fine old
gentleman, who seemed to own all the children on
board, though the stewardess said he had only three
wives, an Italian, a Greek, and an Arab. I made friends
with the two last, who were very handsome and unveiled,
H

98 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
but I fancy the Itaban was ashamed of showing herself
in public ; there were seventeen women in all belong
ing to that very gentlemanly colonel ! At Cyprus he
went on shore and brought back a big basket containing
huge radishes and black bread for the family ; its Head
was a most domestic character, and used to cut up the
salads for them, and hush the babies to sleep in his
arms ; sometimes he gave them a cuffing ab round
too. How patient those poor women were ! they
neither squabbled nor complained, though for four
days and nights they never came out, and had only a
couple of yards of space apiece : raw vegetables, bread,
and water were their sole food, but the children had
brown sugar with their bread.
The Governor's harem was treated to more dainty
dishes ; we watched the making of one, which was pretty
if not good. First, radishes and tomatoes were cut up
fine, then hard-boiled eggs in quarters, with olives-
arranged in a mosaic pattern : lemon-juice was squeezed
over it, then sardines were carefully skinned and laid
with their heads all in the centre of the pattern : when
this dish was completed, with much washing of hands
and nicety, grapes were put into the small end of a sugar-
loaf basket, bread above them, and this salad in a shin
ing green crockery dish on the top of all ; and the cook
looked up with an expression of conscious pride in his
work, and said " very good " as he sent it in to the ladies,
who I have no doubt enjoyed picking it to bits with
their henna-dyed finger tips. Although they were such
great grandees they were not admitted into the best
cabins, and I had these again all to myself. The
children ran about the deck, playing with the captain's
pointer dog, and it was funny to see him rushing on

in Beyroot 99
ahead of them with one of their yellow shoes or a cap
in his mouth, the whole tribe of fancy-dressed little
things after him, tib the colonel got up and cuffed
them all round, and the dog took his prize, and laid
it at the feet of his own European friend.
Though we stopped some hours both at Cyprus and
Ehodes we could not land at either : one island seemed
fub of date palms, the other of windmills, and the
mouth of Ehodes harbour was quite narrow enough
for a Colossus to have rested with one foot on either
side. We had a harp and a violin between the decks
every evening, and the strange figures crowding round
them, lighted partly by the full moon, and partly by
lanterns, would have made a good study.
Eliot Warburton's dragoman (then landlord of the
Oriental Hotel) took possession of us at Beyroot, and
carried us off to his house, and very Oriental it was !
From my window I saw many flat house-tops, a woman
washing clothes on one, beyond her were fig trees and
the blue sea ; hundreds of sparrows, and a bird like
a water - wagtab, with a yellow waistcoat (Budytes
melanocephala), were on the near walls ; quite close
to me was a chameleon catching flies in the sun,
much more wide awake than my old pet ; how ugly
it was ! one of the sparrows made a peck at its head
and it moved its eyes right round and frightened the
sparrow away without stirring otherwise.
Our quarters were not bad, but the house was too
full of men boarders ; ab their famibes being stib in
the hibs, and having taken their cooks with them, the
men were forced to live in the hotels. We were also
tormented by dragomen hungry for work; nineteen
called the first morning in every sort of costume and

ioo Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
all degrees of roguery. We had to explain that it was
impossible to go everywhere with them ab at once, but
we would take their portraits if they bked ; they seemed
to think that would not pay, and so departed. The
dragoman of the house of course easily captured us as
strangers, and took us for a half hour's ride to a cafe"
under some pine trees to see a game of jereed ; there was
none after all, but we saw fine horsemen scampering
about very prettily, their steeds decorated with strings
of coins, and they moved most gracefully in and out
swayed by every movement of their riders' bodies, one
of the mares having a httle- foal trotting after her.
We soon left our hotel with its table dJhdte of
eighteen rather rough-looking Europeans, and found
nice rooms at the Bellevue, which we had all to
ourselves, with a long open gabery to sit in facing
the beautiful bay, beyond which was the snow-covered
Mount Lebanon. On the other side, between us and
the sea, were rocks caved out underneath, and honey
combed, so that every wave which dashed against them
sent the water up in fantastic fountains through the
porous crust ; there were lovely sea-weeds and marine
creatures in those caves. Behind the house were
huge old hedges of cactus higher than myself, with
trunks like timber trees, palms and agaves and flat-
roofed houses golden in the sunshine, and festooned
with vines half hidden in gardens of figs and pome
granates, with roses and hibiscus wild in the hedges.
Many picturesque people wandered about, who looked
pleased to see us, and did not want to be our drago
men, or object to being drawn ; women with their faces
uncovered too, and glorious eyes, who carried small
babies on their hips and sometimes on their shoulders,

iii Beyroot i o i
the sleeping heads resting against their mother's, and
small fingers grasping her long hair. Some of the
women carried empty water jars slung over their
shoulders, as in the Elgin marbles.
Whbe we were staying at the Bellevue a most
entertaining pair of people came there, Emin Pasha
and his wKe, both belonging to the Belgian branch of
the noble famby of Schwartzenberg. He had just
been appointed to the military command of Beyroot,
after having spent eight years far up the country, often
bving for months without seeing another European,
Madame also left alone for long periods, and in the
greatest anxiety about her husband when he was sent
on service of danger. She was the quietest and
gentlest of old ladies, and wore the same sort of poke
bonnet she had taken out of Europe with her some
ten years before — almost a Quaker bonnet. He was
a perfect gentleman, with the most caressing manner,
but warmed up as he talked till, bke an actor, he
could not help impersonating the character he was
describing. I never heard stories better told, and we
sat hour after hour quite into the night listening to
his adventures, and enjoying the beautiful French he
bold them in ; we never got enough of it. The old lady
was so proud of him, she enjoyed his stories as much
as we did, and when we were alone she was nearly as
interesting to listen to as her husband. She was a
true heroine, and had gone uncomplainingly through all
sorts of dangerous times and discomforts, often entirely
without servants, but then they had such horses ! The
General's black horse was absolutely perfect. It had
three white feet, which Arabs say meant good fortune,
and a star on its forehead for invincibility ; for the rest

102 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
was quite a blue black in colour, with a most intelb-
gent head, and a glorious shape. It was only five
years old, and the General was still educating it,
teaching it to do all sorts of wonderful things. He
offered me a ride on his favourite, but I knew my
place and declined.
His Arab mare too was of unknown value; no
Arab would sell one of that race for any money. She
had been taken in battle, and two of his soldiers
disputed for her possession. They went before the
Cadi, and wrangled for an hour and a half, when he
stopped them and declared the rightful owner, who
paid as his fee a camel. The General gave the man
the worth of the camel, £5 (in the desert), and took
the mare, and sometimes he heard Arabs exclaim as
they saw her, " There goes  " I forget her name.
She was fourteen years old, and her daughter even
more beautiful than herself. The common fee for a
judgment about a horse is a camel, for a camel it is
a sheep, for a female camel two sheep. When the
precious filly was born it had a camel for a wet-nurse,
and she got so attached to her foster-chbd that she
used to stalk off to the hbls to feed in the daytime, but
always returned of her own accord to suckle it at night.
The chief of the tribe to which this mare had belonged
had offered eighteen of his best horses to have her
back again. (We heard many years after that all
these pets of the Pasha's had been poisoned by people
who did not like his honest ways of collecting taxes.)
He told us some amusing stories of Turkish
stupidity : for instance, he said he had once accepted
an offer of breakfast from a rich man who knew
the ways of the world, and thought himself quite

"1 Beyroot 103
a Frenchman. The servants spread a clean table
cloth on the ground, then they brought a handsome
inlaid table, which they laid on the table-cloth, but
upside down, with its legs in the air, and then a tray
of good things, which they balanced on the tops of the
legs ! Another old Turk, when shown a portrait of
some great man by Desange, said, " Yes, it was bke, but
was not the embroidery equally beautiful on the back
of his coat, why did they not paint that in too ? "
Another asked what that great box was for, meaning
the piano, so Madame sat down and played to him :
he said, Mashabah ! and began a deep calculation,
declaring that that woman must be at least worth
60,000 piastres! One day Emm saw an old gentle
man looking very inconsolable, and was told he had
just lost a most beautiful and favourite daughter, so
he went to try and comfort him. " Yes, she was most
precious, of infinite value ; fool that I was, I refused
50,000 piastres for her only last month, and now she
is gone and it is too late."
His stories did not tend to raise our respect for
the Turks. When he had first gone to Hamah, six
years before, the road was in such a state that it
could only be passed over at fub gabop ; his luggage
was stopped, but he and his escort were just in time
to drive the Arabs off: when he left the district any
one could go safely at any hour over those roads ; he
used to be held up as a terror by the native women to
their children : " You be good or Emin will come," and
at the mention of this mbd old gentleman's name the
children stopped roaring. If at any time he heard of
any violent or rebellious deeds he said nothing, but
the next day at sunrise he was among the culprits,

104 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
and fired a cannon into their tents, when they thought
he was the devb and submitted. He told us how
he had gone to the Governor of Syria at the time
of the Damascus massacre, and found him looking
out of a window with other officials at the people
cutting each other's throats. He asked for authority to
stop it, the Governor refused, " then I shab take it,"
said Emin, and went into the streets with 200 men
he could trust, and one cannon, " twirling my
moustache very fiercely." The Arabs said they did not
like my looks, that I had a mauvaise mine, so they
soon dispersed and slunk into their houses and hiding-
places, and the murdering ceased. There was great
rejoicing amongst those people when he left, the old
state of things re-estabbshing itself at once, and the
authorities wished him to return, but he had had
enough . of it, and thought six years of such complete
exile was as much as he could endure, or his wife
either, who could never help dreading that Fuad Pasha's
enmity might still prevent their staying on at Beyroot,
where they for a whbe enjoyed a certain amount of
civbisation. The French had lately opened a dibgence road to
Damascus, and we were unlucky enough to go over it
in a sort of omnibus, in which we were too crammed to
be able to see out ; a horrid fat Jewess was sick nearly
all the way, and the whole party had a great idea of the
danger of travelbng on wheels ; we should have enjoyed
the journey if we could have ridden, as we afterwards
did, over that beautiful road on horseback. It was
a fine bit of engineering, and took us up and down the
two mountain passes of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon in
twelve hours. A new French Consul was in front of

Damascus 105

us, and all the great men and officials came out with
escorts at different points to do him honour, the
wbdest figures, each dressed, mounted, and armed
according to his own particular taste and means ; they
generaby galloped up and down the banks on either
side of us, and had mock fights wherever there was
room, flourishing spears twice as long as themselves.
They rode in the most reckless way, their wild steeds
seeming to enjoy it ; these last had a few broken knees,
but many of them were noble thorough-breds. The
men were ragged enough, with scarcely a pair of stock
ings among a hundred, but they had gaudy scarves and
turbans or kaftans tied on with bits of camel's-hair
rope. Between the two mountain ranges the diligence
stopped half-an-hour for rest and food ; we walked on
and met a whole tribe of many hundreds of Arabs
crossing the valley, gaudby dressed in red, purple,
gold, and sbver, — all the colours of a tubp bed. We
stopped to look at them, and they stopped to look
at us, and I was beginning to sketch some of them
when our wbd escort dashed up, hooting and clashing
and flourishing their long spears like demons at
Astleys, and they were followed by the horrid dibgence,
into which we were again packed in the midst of a
perfectly good-humoured tumult, which was most
exciting in its novelty. Then came darkness, and we
found ourselves in Damascus, one of the places I had
most longed to see in the world.
We soon felt ourselves at home in Dimitri's beauti
ful Eastern house; he himself had been Kinglake's
dragoman, and was an ideal landlord, so fat, and sleek,
and patronising, though he did wear baggy breeches,
a Greek fez, and a sash. He greeted my father with

106 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
"Very happy to see you again, sir!" though they had
never met before, but he wished to treat him as an
old friend. His house had a marble-paved court with
fish-ponds and pots of orange trees in its centre, and
was beautifully clean and airy, with pretty painted
and panebed rooms fub of odd carved recesses, niches,
and cupboards, elaborately carved hanging windows
and odd staircases. His wife, a handsome Greek
woman, was always pattering about on high Turkish
pattens inlaid with pearl, looking after the household,
and had generally some fresh flowers stuck behind her
ears. They had no children, but had lately adopted
a bttle boy whose parents had died of cholera the
summer before ; it was raging fearfully then, and our
English Consul had lost both wKe and child in a few
hours from the disease. The shops both in the streets
and the bazaars were quite intoxicating to me from
their marvebous richness of colour ; I felt I had never
seen the East tbl then, and the very names of things
there sounded like the Arabian Nights.
We were asked if we would ride horses or white
asses, any other colour being infra dig., and we were
taken on the Mecca road in the morning and on that
to Palmyra in the afternoon. The white donkeys are
noble animals, their brisk pace, a kind of amble, is
most lively and agreeable; but the greatest attractions
were the wild Bedouins in every variety of striped
bournous or abbaieh, grand specimens of toasted
humanity, and the heads of their half wbd horses
were wonderfully intelligent and handsome too. The
common women, in blue drapery edged with red or
yebow, put over the head and folded gracefuby about
the figure, reminded me of old Italian Madonnas.

iii Damascus 107
Everything in Damascus seemed so real, the very
original of all other places ; we met running water
at every turn, fountains and aqueducts — no wonder
Naaman thought bttle of other streams ; great plane
trees stood in the midst of the streets, and maiden
hair grew in the midst of the bazaars ; troops of women
in white sheets and yebow boots were riding on white
asses ; men were carrying trays of beans and melons cut
in wedges to be eaten with the fingers on the spot, or
taken away in a fig leaf, others carrying a branch of
orange or lemon, each as tall as himseK, loaded with
fruit, or a bunch of sugar-canes even longer; there were
parties of wild-looking dervishes, Jews in chimney
pot hats and ringlets, an endless variety of races, but
they ab looked good-humouredly at us, and we felt safe
to go alone through the crowd up the hill-sides or
among the gardens. The Arab bazaar reminded me of
Westminster Hab from its wide span, even the camels
looked insignificant as they tramped through its
crowded centre, and the views from its comparative
darkness into the glare outside were enchanting ; there
were ruined mosques without number, and elegant
minarets put up as memorials, bke painted windows at
home, more to show how rich the givers were than to
honour the dead. There was also a wonderful vault
full of some hundreds of silversmiths (very dangerous
to my purse), all sitting cross-legged and hammering,
each in his own bttle cage. When we went in the
drawers under their seats were unlocked, and all sorts
of jingling gauds were thrust into our hands, original in
design but rough in workmanship, though one might
see in the same place the finest diamonds cutting and
setting, whbe the little children ran after us with

108 Recollections qf a Happy Life chap.
handfuls of nose-rings and earrings of value, as well
as " antikitas," — old arms or pots of metal exquisitely
engraved or enamelled. They asked always ten times
as much as they meant to take, though the people
were honest in a way ; one never thought at Damascus
of locking doors in the hotel.
From the heights above the city the view was
most striking, like an old dream to us, who knew it
already from Mr. Lear's painting, in which ab was so
accurately drawn. The great spurs of Hermon and
anti - Lebanon surround the golden desert on three
sides, the other only relieved by sand-hbls on the
far horizon towards Palmyra, whbe in the midst lay
the great oasis of some 30,000 acres produced by
the wonderful irrigation of the rivers Abana and
Pharpar, with its noble white city in the very
centre, ornamented by domes and minarets in
numerable. The great temple mosque and an old
fragment of a rich Corinthian portico stib stand up
high above the Moslem bazaars. We had cbmbed
one day on some of the neighbouring flat roofs near,
in order to examine them more closely, and saw
also the Christian inscriptions over the doorways, and
on what was doubtless originally the "House of
Eimmon." I had a window looking into the street, in which
strange figures were constantly coming and going,
though this window was so fitted with shutters that I
could only squint out of it. There was a poor street
dog opposite with a famby, which grew less every day,
till it dwindled down to four poor bttle puppies ; the
mother got into awful rages when other dogs came
too near, then her barking brought others up and

m Damascus

109

there was a general scrimmage ; she worked hard to
save her helpless children, and the natives in the
neighbouring houses helped her, and gave her food.
We had a good-natured guide, a Jew named Elias,
who protected me when sketching; my attempts at
portrait-painting were not objected to in Damascus,
and they let me work even in their crowded bazaars
with great kindness, looking approvingly at the result
afterwards, with one eye passing all over the paper
within half an inch of the surface, and with an air
of intense satisfaction. Once while at work an old
man sat himseK down by me, and gave me a handful
of myrtle berries (which tasted like apples flavoured
with eau-de-Cologne), and watched me munching
them. If I left off for a moment he nudged my elbow,
and pointed first at his basket of berries, and then
at my mouth, so I went on to oblige him, and when
I got up to go away he poured the rest into my
pocket, and smbed benevolently. Elias took me one
day on my white ass to the hills, where those myrtles
and other aromatic shrubs grew amongst the dry
stones, and on beyond the aqueducts, where we found
many picturesque tombs (ruins enough to supply two
or three English counties with a pretence for picnics) ;
not a weed was to be seen there, though all was
green below the water -courses. Many of the trees
had Engbsh names, but were quite different in character ;
there were tab poplars with white linings to their leaves,
and vines running up to their very tops, all then turn
ing yellow in the autumn tints, huge old apricots, from
which the famous mish-mash is made, olives full of
ripe purple fruit, pomegranates, peaches, radishes as
big as carrots, oranges, lemons, and citrons, — the sound

no Recollections of a Haf>py Life chap.
of running water was everywhere, and yet not a single
web-kept garden.
We went to see the one belonging to Madame
Digby (as Lady Ebenborough was generally cabed),
and found it a complete tangle. She was stib at Hums,
having been in tents for eight months with her Arab
husband, who was only thirty -two; she was much
respected among the tribes, being very rich and
charitable; when in Damascus she wore a crinoline
and went to church (when there was one) like a
European. My father left a card for the sister of
his old friend and schoolfellow, and we were very
sorry to miss seeing her. Abdul Kader was also living
quietly in Damascus, where he had the reputation of
being very wise, a prophet and the possessor of second
sight ; the great carriage and English horses the
French empress had given him were the terror of
everybody, and could only find room to move on the
one great dihgence road towards Beyroot, on which the
ladies of his harem were taken for a mile every day,
and then brought back again. Crowds used to collect
to see them go, wheels being stbl a strange sight
to all the inhabitants there, though they were not
astonished, as I was, to see a big crab walk across
the diligence road one day.
It was only ten days' camel ride to Bagdad, horses
would have taken twenty, because slow camels would
have been required to go with them and carry a
supply of water for their use, though the beast of
burden could content himself without any; how we
longed to go on and see the scenes of so many of the
Arabian Nights! The Turks have postage stamps,
but would not trust any one but the postmasters to

iii Beyroot in
stick them on ; one had ' to pay for the letter at the
office, and wait to see the official tongue bck the
stamp and put it on. It took five days to get an
answer between Damascus and Beyroot, though the
letter went by dibgence, which only took two days going
and coming : we returned in the banquette on the
top of the dibgence, and admired the scenery as well
as we could through a snowstorm, which continued
ab the way and nearly froze us in our seats. The
"Post" himself shared the perch with us, and told
us that nothing but the very worst weather drove
him into the dbigence, he could do it so much faster
on horseback. He hated a road which was not straight,
it was so sbly going zigzag, as the French would insist
on making it; but the two passes were about 5500
feet high, and we thought it would have been rather
too steep without the " siby " zigzag. The clouds and
atmospheric effects on that stormy day were very fine,
but my father judged it wiser at that season to give
up our talked-of expedition to Baalbec, and we went
on straight to our old quarters at Beyroot, where we
were welcomed again most heartby by the Pasha
and Madame Schwartzenberg.
The plain of Beyroot is fertile wherever it is mi-
gated ; orange trees produced abundance of fruit, but the
extreme ends of the branches were frost-bitten ; corn
grew under the obves and mulberries, and the date palms
showed their fruit shaded from the palest yebow to
orange and brown, with rough untidy trunks. We rode
one day along the sands to Dog river, Nahr el Kelb,
and thence by a famous paved road, said to have been
made by Sesostris, or some Assyrian king, whose tablets,
covered with cuneiform characters, are carved on the

112 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
face of a cliff overhanging both it and the river. There
is another tablet to some Eoman emperor, and one to
Louis Napoleon, who is supposed to have repaired the
road more recently, but we could never make out
where ; I know my horse slipped his hind feet into
a hidden hole, and stuck there, whbe I sbpped off
easby, and he was hauled up by a couple of passing
travellers, one pulling by his head, the other by his
tail, so we came home none the worse.
We left Beyroot in a most luxurious Eussian steamer
called after a Eussian Prince Olaf, who they said con
quered Constantinople about 1000 years before the rest
of the world knew of its existence ; we had forty-eight
bullocks on board, going from the Crimea to the Suez
Canal, but for us a most comfortable suite of first class
cabins, furnished magnificently, and with only one lady
and a little dog to share it. We landed at Jaffa,
through' a long reef of rocks, which almost grazed the
boat on each side, as it was carried in on the top of a
favourable wave, being lifted through the surf on
men's shoulders ; when we wanted to return, the same
men poked my feet in first at a higher level than my
head, and to this moment I have little idea how the
rest of my body got in ! A gentleman in magenta
trousers was dropped in the process, and probably
cursed the day when aniline colours were invented,
and wished he had stuck to the old turkey red, the
most durable of all dyes. The oranges which grow
behind the town of Jaffa have a world-wide reputation,
one sort especially, with a green skin of great thickness,
and as big as a citron, was most capital, exquisitely
cool, sweet, and juicy, with but few seeds. At Port
Said the captain lent us his boat, and we rowed to the

Ill

Egypt 113

end of the great stone jetty then in process of making
at the mouth of the canal, but they would not let us
land without four days' quarantine. , The stones were
brought from Messina and Malta by iron steamers,
with large bow-shaped girders to strengthen them;
dredges were working incessantly in the canal mouth.

CHAPTEE IV
EGYPT
We landed the next morning at Alexandria. It was a
nasty, mongrel, mosquito-ish place, and we got out of it
as fast as we could ; but I saw there the first mass of the
lovely ipomsea cabed " morning glory " which ever met
my eyes, and I can never forget it ; there must have
been some thousands of light blue bells three inches
across, all turning towards the sun, and so close to
gether as to hide the green leaves almost entirely. In
the railway carriage which took us to Cairo we had
Dr. Beke and his pretty young wKe, with her hab- cut
short and manners rather independent; my father.
could not open the door fast enough when we reached
the refreshment station haK-way, so she beckoned up
our dragoman, who was passing, and made him pull
her through the window, merely remarking that she
was rather heavier than when he last lifted her.
Michael told us afterwards he had good reason to
remember her, having been with her in the desert
when there was a dispute with some Arabs, and the
lady had shot off her revolver and wounded him, and
not the Arabs !
Our route along the Delta was much like that

CHAP. IV

Egypt 115

across the fens of Ely, but was richly cropped with
cotton and Indian corn, with scarcely a tree to break
the monotony of the landscape, and but few vblages ;
every cottage a square block of hardened mud without
windows, and the flat roofs covered with pigeons,
chickens, and cats ; primitive ploughs, as if taken from
old Egyptian carvings, were scratching the rich soil,
drawn by a cow or a camel, and sometimes both
together ; winter grain was coming up, and maize tops
were harvesting for fodder. The natives had that
calm soft type of countenance that marks the old
statuary of their country, large eyes and gentle expres
sion, but no strength of character, and one could easily
see that the old sculptors had before their eyes the
ancestors of the present race, and that, though the
ruling classes might be changed in Egypt, the fellahs
or original population of that land are of the same
blood as their forefathers. Always slaves and unre
sisting to tyranny, they bubt the pyramids, and raised
the huge masses of Karnak, just as within the present
century hecatombs fell in the execution of Mahomet
Ali's project, the Nile canal, — a grand and useful
work ; and now again quite recently at Monsieur de
Lessep's stbl greater work, the Suez canal, or mud-
ditch, as Stephenson contemptuously cabed it.
We had brought the great Michael Hamy with us
to arrange for our Nbe voyage, but found on arriving at
Cairo ab his proposals were so exorbitant that my father
paid him off, and sent him home again, and we settled
ourselves in the Hotel du Nil, in the centre of the town,
contented to wait patiently in that most entertaining
of capitals till something turned up! I found the
picturesqueness of the streets and neighbourhood even

1 1 6 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
greater than that of Damascus, and should have en
joyed passing the whole winter there. My father hated ¦
riding donkeys, I liked it, so he walked and I rode, and
my bttle blue beast went at such a pace that even he
could not keep up with it, and I had to stop at every
street corner till he came up. My donkey-man knew
a few words of many languages, and made the most of
them by transposing and reversing their order in a
sentence, for instance, " gentleman bke donkey," " no
gentleman bke donkey," "donkey no bke gentleman."
He told his beast where to go, and the clever creature
trotted off right or left accordingly. "Donkey speak
Engbsh," then the donkey always put its ears back and
kicked out behind, — they thoroughly understood one
another. I rode the native saddle always, using the
high hump as a pommel to steady my knee on.
Our quarters in the German hotel were most com
fortable and quiet. I had a room next the landlady's
upstairs, with a window looking into the garden or
central court, and my father one on the ground opposite,
with a tangle of palms, lantanas, hibiscus, poinsettias,
jasmines, and roses between us, and this was in the
very heart of old Cairo. A huge pebcan stalked about
the gardens, and a tame monkey chattered and sprang
amidst the tree branches and verandahs, a tame ostrich
walked up and down the lane leading to the house,
and seemed to keep guard over the entrance. I only
remember one of our fellow-lodgers (the others being
mostly German commercial gentlemen), Mr. Palgrave
the Arabian traveller, who was extremely agreeable and
amusing, fub of good talk, and having an extraordinary
knowledge of languages, especially those of the East ;
he was waiting for orders to go and find Cameron in

iv Egypt 1 1 7
Abyssinia, and hoped the king might be a few degrees
south of Gondar, it would be so jolly going there after
him ! He had tried many kinds of bfe, having been a
mufti and preached so well to native Arabs in their
own tongue that they never found him out. He had
been a Jesuit priest at Beyroot and in Indian convents,
and he was then paying court to a lady at Alexandria,
I was told with the object of showing by matrimony
that he was no longer a Jesuit priest, or bound to any
particular religion, and I believe he was at that time
honest in saying he had none ; his father had originally
been a Jew named Cohen, but had taken the name of his
Christian wife, a lady celebrated for her beauty and an
heiress. He was extremely kind to my father, who
was very unweb whbe at Cairo, and treated him with
more attention and skib than any doctor we could
have found there ; he was a universal genius.
Books might easby be filled with the wonders of
Cairo and its architecture, its elaborate arabesques,
and patterns in stone-work, plaster, and wood carving,
every great man built new mosques and houses, and
let the old ones go to ruin, which made them none the
worse for an artist ; the vice of restoration had not
yet reached Egypt. The tombs outside the city were
perhaps the greatest gems of ab, they were surrounded
by the desert of golden sand, and only visited by flights
of falcons or stray Arab wanderers. One day we
saw a grand review out on the desert, including the
famous camel regiment, but the horses were none of
them to be compared with those of our friend at
Beyroot, though some of the great Egyptians were
gorgeously dressed in crimson velvet and gold. Eich
men spend vast sums on the decoration of their animals,

118 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
and I have seen donkeys with complete suits of sbver
over them. On our way to the review my donkey
was pushed on one side by black horsemen, when a
kind of Lord Mayor's coach with the principal wives, and
thirty more full of the other women of the Pasha's
harem, dashed past us, and such a dust they made !
Europeans seemed popular with the people, who
bked showing off any words they knew, one poor man
carrying wood outside the gates wished us bona sera,
and chuckled to himself in the distance a long while
afterwards ; their dark skins were very beautiful, and
the sbver rope bracelets and sham corals looked
glorious on their polished arms, their wrists were
so slender, and the gap left in their huge heavy
bracelets, through which they slip them on, was per
fectly impossible for European arms of average size ;
they had great rings round their necks, and all sorts
of jingles in their ears and from their noses, so that I
could quite understand the delight of despoiling the
Egyptians. I found picture subjects without end ;
when a merchant left his stall he merely hung up a
net over the front and no one thought of touching it,
though all sorts of valuables might easily have been
stolen ; many of the figures looked just like walking
mummies, and required no extra wrapping when they
died, whbe the striped 'abbaiehs when drawn over the
head made men look bke « sphinxes, the lines falling
around it just in the same formal way.
I confess to having looked at Egyptian things from
a purely picturesque point of view, and was scolded
for this by the Cairo clergyman's wife : " Dear, dear,
like ab travebers, you wander hither and thither and
see nothing with a proper object, everything from a

IV

Egypt 1 1 9

false point of view. I suppose you never considered
that on the precise spot where those Mameluke tombs
stand the Israelites made their bricks without straw ! "
And her husband took us to the top of a hill and
showed us the very stone on which Moses stood to
count the Israebtes as they passed out of Egypt ! At
any rate fine views were still to be got there, and the
Nbe vabey and pyramids of Ghizeh and Sakkarah
seemed a perfect sea of green vegetation, with but
bttle desert in proportion. We picked up quantities
of fossilised sea-shebs on that hill-top, and my
suggestion that they might have been the remains of
a picnic the Jews had before they started, was not
received favourably ; yet it was difficult to ridicule
the good man who, when a doctor in India, had stayed
through a terrible time of cholera, taking care of the
poor people when all others fled.
One day we went to Hebopobs with Mr. Palgrave,
but did not find much left of that Egyptian home of
learning except the obelisk ; however we had a most
entertaining day with our odd friend, the most curious
compound of a reckless adventurer and almost old-
maidish valetudinarian : the Consul-General and his
wife were also most hospitable to us. One night we met
at their house a very rich pair of Engbsh people, who
had a difficulty in finding a dahabieh large enough to
hold them as web as their man cook and maid and
huge packages from Fortnum and Mason's, besides all
the other encumbrances they had brought out from
England with them. The lady was looking for a
second maid, as her own was debcate and often unequal
to the exertion of doing her hair ; one day she had even
been so unwell that Mrs. W. had to sit at home half

120 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the day because her hair was not done, which was too
tiresome ! The husband had been to India and de
lighted in telling us of his elephant murders, which
he cabed sport. One day we passed them both in
the street, walking with a great Egyptian official, and
the lady was asking him without any ceremony how
many wives he had, to his great astonishment and
disgust : it is strange how .bttle tact some people
have, and never can acquire.
At last we found a dragoman willing to take us up
the river at a reasonable rate, and we started on the
day after Christmas with two fellow-passengers, — a
French gentleman in tight boots and a diamond ring,
who traced hieroglyphics very slowly, and kept a
journal, and Mr. S., a young architect with the E.A.
travelling scholarship, and enormous industry. He
took a camera-lucida and traced every squared stone
with it from Cairo to Aboo Simbel and back: both
were most gentlemanly and agreeable companions,
dividing the end of the boat between them, while my
father and myself had each one of the side cabins.
We were excellently fed by an old cook, who said he
had cooked for the English for forty years, but who
had no visible eyes. The sabors were a happy simple
race, and two of the boys were absolutely beautiful, of
a bright shiny copper tint, and liked sitting for their
pictures ; one man only of the nine said his prayers
regularly on a bit of old carpet, morning and evening,
and went in consequence by the name of the saint.
The old steersman was like an animal-headed sphinx,
only I never saw any animal so ugly. He would collect
a large bundle of grass off the banks of the river when
we stopped, put it down near the rudder, and go on

iv Egypt 1 2 1
munching it ab day, as a cow chews the cud, till it all
disappeared. The captain was as black as a coal and
very dignified, he was always curled up on the upper
deck on a heap of rags and pibows, and took cups of
coffee perpetually with the air of a king, occasionally
waking up and giving mild orders ; he used most
courteously to offer me his pblows each time I went
on deck : query, Why have black people such pink tips
to their fingers, does the constant friction rub the
colour off ? We had a poor goat, which was kept in a
hole and would put its head out and cry after the kid
which had been left at Cairo ; my father, who liked fo
do in Turkey as the Turkeys did, used to make speeches
to it, beginning : " Oh thou harem of Billy," thinking
that it was the most delicate way of addressing a she-
goat. Our waiting-boy or housemaid was like a hero
of the Arabian Nights, — so languidly graceful and
useless. Our French febow-passenger was absurdly national
and unlike us in everything. He got up late in the
morning, and came into the saloon in demi-toilette
as we were finishing our breakfast, having been
strangled and frozen entirely by the cold, and, mon
Bieul he had no appetite! he would take a glass
of lemonade and his narghile, and lecture us in the
most polite and unreasonable way about the Mtise
and Engbsh barbarism of fatiguing the stomach so
early in the morning by eating : after a little while he
would get faint with hunger, and declare the cold
would kill him, and, mon Bieu ! he would die if he got
nothing to eat till so late, and Achmet ya Achmet !
and then he began gorging bke a boa-constrictor,
stopping every now and then to explain how much

122 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
better the food would have been if etc., etc., after
which he began smoking again, and tried to draw, but,
mon Bieu ! he had no time, if he only had time he
could do something of true merit ! At dinner he told
us the Engbsh ate raw beef and could not carve
even a chicken in the right way, so he would like to
show us how. His way was clever, but required
chickens in the plural number K among several persons ;
he would divide the bird in two, taking off the back
and legs in one piece, which he set up on another dish
with the feet upwards ; he cabed it a mitre, and sent
it out to be kept for cold, cutting up the breast and
wings in small disc-bke bits to be eaten then.
All three men smoked continually all the evening,
and were consequently happy, till I felt myself
becoming as dry as a red herring ; but smoking is a
blessed invention and peacemaker amongst men, and
I highly approve of it, so we ab got on tolerably
together, and my father's health improved every day.
Mr. S. confided to me that the Frenchman went to bed
clothes and all, and that his toilette in the morning
consisted of a thorough brushing downwards with the
same brush, beginning with his hair, then his green
velvet coat, and lastly his dear shining boots, c'est tout,
voila ! He made himseK of use in the scolding way,
and disapproved from the first of the coffee, which he
called, dc I'eau sale. He also complained he could not
get filtered water to wash in, if he could not get it
filtered he would not wash his " figure " at ab. He
was told Madame only used that of the Nile for hers.
"Madame was too good to complain, and besides
she was an Englishwoman, bah ! " My father's cabin
became like a fretful porcupine from the quantity

IV

Egypt 123

of pins and nails he hammered all over it, and we
used to say that if the vessel took to rolling at night
we should find him minced up in the morning ; mine
was perfectly comfortable, and when my waterproof
was spread over my bed it made a capital wash-stand,
and on it I painted all day when not on land.
The weary periods of the voyage were the many
days without wind, when we were pushed and dragged
against the stream, or hardly moved at all, but then
we could get on shore, where one was sure to find
something fresh to see or draw, and the steering
creature got fresh loads of lucerne or grass to munch,
winking at us between the mouthfuls, to show how
good it was. " Bbly's harem " also enjoyed it, and both
feeds were stolen. If there had been nothing else
the sunsets and sunrises would have rewarded us for
going up the Nbe; they were so gorgeous and so various
in colour. We soon found out that our dragoman was a
regular brute in every way. Once, in order to propitiate
me, he promised to buy a little girl " so high " to wait
upon me when we got to Nubia, and then he would
set her free and send her to school with his own
chbdren when the voyage was over, but I knew how
much truth there was likely to be in the last part of
his speech, and my father was furious at the proposal.
The sailors would sing some curious wbd chants when
rowing, the captain leading off each verse with an
elaborate flourish, and they always sang the upper
note very sharp, a good quarter tone too high, I
thought ; but as the Egyptians originally invented the
musical scale, perhaps they were right and I was
wrong. We were continually sticking in the mud, and then

124 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
ab the men jumped into the water, wearing their
turbans but throwing aside all their other rags, to
push and pull us off again; and once at sunset another
boat beside ours was stranded, and ab the neighbour
ing population was in and out of the river trying to
get them off. The hour of prayer had come, and our
saint and some others began at once, just where they
were, up to their knees in water, going through all the
devotions ordered by Mahomet. They looked pictu
resquely black against the orange sky, all reflected in the
damp sands and calm river. It was a wondrous study
of form and colour. Another pretty scene was that
of the men taking their supper every night, when they
would sit round a fire and bob up their broken bits of
hard brown bread with an onion and some peas in a
large pot, and help themselves out of it alternately
with three fingers hollowed out like a spoon, shaking
off back into the pot between each helping what they
could not get into their mouths; the little low fire
lit up their dark faces most magnificently : they were
very stupid and awkward in their manner of dragging
the rope, and often got it tangled up with the other
boats and barges, trees and rocks, even broke it some
times, when we used at once to drift down the stream
faster than we had come up.
We passed many fine engines and other expensive
machines, the toys of former pashas, rusting on the
banks, and now and then one was in use for pumping
up water or sawing wood ; but most of the irrigation
was done by the simplest pulleys or wheels, or even
manual labour.
At Minieh we landed, and I bought some red and
white cabco, and then some more white to be dyed

iv Egypt 125
blue (that colour is never kept in stock, as the natives
prefer having it fresh), and I set to work to make a
Union Jack. When we started my father had refused
to have one, thinking it would hurt the Frenchman's
feelings, but now to his horror he found he had
hoisted the tricolor on board, and as both he and
Achmet talked of buying slaves, my father thought it
was time we had the English flag over our heads to
render such traffic ibegal; so we soon had a very
remarkable specimen of that noble ensign, to which the
French flag had to give place. Achmet was always
cringing and bullying. One evening I came out
rubbing my hands with cold ; so the good old captain
beckoned me to come and warm them over some
wood ashes in a box, and we both sat on our heels
stretching out our different-coloured paws over the
heat most amicably, and making complimentary
speeches in unknown tongues, when the odious drago
man touched my shoulder, — "that no place for you,
you never go near them fellows." His touch seemed
to draw ab the warmth from my fingers and put it
into my tongue, as I ordered him off. A little while
after I heard his snake-bke voice in the cabin hissing
out, " Missis, you like jam omelette for dinner to-day ? "
Bribery and corruption ! How odious that man was !
What a population there seemed to be in Upper
Egypt, and how much might be made of that fertile
soil near the river with a good Government ! but the
present rulers actually tax the wheels that pump the
water which makes cultivation possible, and in one
place we saw one of the finest English steam-ploughs
sunk in the sand, and doing duty as a common
pumping machine. We passed 15,000 poor labourers

126 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
being carried down to the pubbc works of Lower
Egypt, packed tightly in barges, and towed by steamers :
how many of these would ever return? Si6out was
our first regular day on shore, here the men made
their bread, and we mounted the side of a hill, and
saw our first caves, with gigantic figures sketched on
the smoothed surface of the rock to guard their entrance,
keeping their eyes at the same time on the rich crops
of young corn and tares, lentils, cotton, and sugar-cane,
which bordered the great river below. Mr. S. and I
worked hard all day, whbe my father cbmbed the hbls
above, and the Frenchman in his best hat and gloves
went off by himself to discover "something truly
curious," but didn't ; afterwards he made the chase of
some " savage turtle doves," and made us eat them for
dinner. We spent ten shibings in the bazaar on the
pretty earthenware pots for which Sioout is famous ;
then we went on, and soon entered the region of the
doum palm. Birds also became more common, we
had seen troops of pelicans, ibex, storks, and ducks,
and now we had abundance of larks and water-wag-
tabs, and lovely long-tailed green birds almost bke
parrakeets, but smaller. What people mean by calling
the Nbe uninteresting I never could understand, we
always found abundance . to entertain us on shore or
afloat. The men chose to fancy I was a doctress, and the old
steersman would uncover his chest and show me with
many grimaces that he had a pain there, and I used
to give him bits of sugar with camphor on it, after
which, whenever I looked at him, he would rub the
spot gently, and smbe gratefuby. I wondered, if my
bottle got empty, whether I could reverse the process,

IV

Egypt 127

and give him a bit of camphor with some sugar on it !
I had plenty of those bits of camphor with me to
frighten away the fleas, of which there are no lack in
Egypt ; it is also good to keep in one's pocket as a
preventative against infection of any sort in travebing.
The tamarisk trees were very refreshing as we got
higher up the country, their colouring being of a
pecubar bluish green, their fobage feathery, and the
twisted trunks as pink in the sunbght as those of
Scotch firs.
We were stranded during a whole day at a Copt
village, and the Itaban priest, a nice gentlemanly old
man, came and had luncheon with us, and said he had
not been home for twenty years. He was a doctor as
web as a priest, and said his life was interesting. He
gave me a large citron, grapes, and figs from his garden ;
and told us his vines bore fruit twice in the year, but the
palms gave no dates tib they were eighteen or twenty
years old,' after which the crops became enormous, and
were worth about £5 each tree. The ab there was most
debcious, but as the wind continued contrary, and we
were told it was " about " six miles only to Thebes, we
three Engbsh decided to walk, with the distant towers
of Karnak as our guide, across the fields. Achmet
persisting in slouching after us in his red sbppers, as
his bad conscience made him think we were going to
complain of him and have him bastinadoed, and he
would not bebeve our assurances to the contrary. My
father wished to leave him behind, and put on his
seven-leagued boots : the race was terrible, over the
roughest ground too, and of course, as usual, it was
much farther than we expected, but we reached
the forest of pibars by eleven o'clock, and took a

128 Recollections of a Happy Life chap..
couple of hours' rest on comfortable flat stones near
the great obelisk of Karnak, where I believe we all
went to sleep. The air was fresh, but the sun was
the sun of Egypt, and we 'had gone at a most mad
pace for some hours, punishing ourselves quite as much
as poor Achmet, and the grandest ruin in all the world
could not have kept my eyes open.
We awoke refreshed, and able to take in the
enormous size of that temple, and the rich colouring of
its ornamentation, and to enjoy walking through an
avenue of sphinxes who were apparently waiting for a
surgeon to come to set their broken bones and put
the right heads on the right breasts. That avenue
led us on to Luxor, which is spoilt by a village taken
out of it, sand and all, for at that time it was difficult
even to trace the temple amidst ab its rubbish, and
in the middle of its finest group of columns nestled
the house of Mustapha Agha. Many people said he
was a thief, but he was a courteous friend to all
Europeans on the Nile, and gave us welcome bundles
of letters ahd newspapers, entertaining my father and
Mr. S. with pipes and coffee, while I was seized and
carried off by the faithful Omar to see Lady Duff
Gordon, whom I had not seen for twenty-five years.
She said she should have known me anywhere. She
herself was old and gray, but had still the handsome
face which had captivated me then, in spite of having
burst two blood vessels that year, and she said the
air at Luxor did wonders for her. The natives all
worshipped her, and she doctored them, amused them,
and even smoked with them. They looked on her as
something mysterious, and even rather uncanny, and
respected her accordingly. She bved in some rooms

IV

Egypt 1 29

raised up amongst the pillars of the old temple like
a second story. While I was there a native gentle
man and his brother the Mobah came to pay her a
visit, and the latter wrote a letter under her direction
to a friend at Si6out on the palm of hi& hand, and
rubbed his ring in the ink to sign it with afterwards.
From her balcony she could look across the broad
Nbe and great green plain with its two sitting colossi,
many ruins and tombs, and beyond, the noble mount
ain with shadows that were rosy even at mid-day.
One native visitor held an opera glass to my eye,
with his other hand just in front of it pointing out
the different objects he named, so that I had an unin
terrupted view of a very clean Turkish hand, for
which kindness I thanked him most humbly, and when
he looked through my glass I let him see my hand
in the same way, and he expressed himself perfectly
satisfied with the view. The Eamadan had begun
the day before, and the talk was all about the
exhausted state every one was in, as they only eat by
moonbght ; the moon was just then a mere thread of
silver, with its ends turned up in a most unchristian
way, but very lovely. We hoped to have stayed a
day at Thebes, but when the boat came up our French
febow-traveber was in such a fever to go on that my
father indulged him, and we fired a salute under Lady
Duff Gordon's window as we passed, promising to stay
a week or more on our return.
We went on, drag, drag, drag, again, eight miles
only in thirty hours, and had plenty of time to think
of what we had seen the day before — a hall with 133
pillars, the central ones sixty feet high, the outer ones
forty, ab carved and coloured most elaborately from
K

' 1 30 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
top to bottom, and then the obebsk of ninety-three feet
high cut out of a single stone. Such things make
one feel very small, and the whole scene would have
seemed as a dream to me now had I not stbl, to prove
its reality,. the two sketches I made there between
sleeping and waking. The sunset was particularly
lovely that night ; horns of rose colour were thrown
.up from it over a sky of gold shaded into lemon,
emerald green, and blue, the latter having a touch of
lilac just over the pink rays ; there was not a cloud to
shade the slender silver moon above it. The black
children bathing in the sunset reflections were always
most amusing to watch. First they robed and rubbed
themselves in mud and sand to take the place of soap,
and then again in the river, trampling and dancing upon
their clothes in the mud by way of washing them too ;
they went in and out, looking like shining fishes in
the half bght. -
We stopped at Esneh to bake the men's bread,
and I thought the half-buried temple there particularly
fine. All the capitals of the pibars were different,
and all copied from the lotus plant, its buds, leaves,
stalks or flowers, but our artist declared it Ptolemaic
and " debased." Soon after leaving Esneh we found
one of our poor sailors was dying. We had missed
him for some days, and were told he only had a bad
stomach (the usual complaint), but the poor fellow
died of consumption. He had been taken on board
in that state knowingly by our brutal dragoman, as he
agreed to work his way home without pay, and had
been hidden up in the hold out of sight when too ill
to work. They brought him up now, and Achmet was
boasting to the Frenchman how good he had been not

IV

Egypt 131

to leave him on shore long ago when he would not
work. I stopped him and ordered him to get some
milk for the poor lad, — "What good waste milk
when he be finished so soon ? " And he was finished
and buried a few hours after, near a small village
on the banks. Men are said to be often buried alive
in Egypt, the people having such a horror of any
contact with dead corpses.
About Sbsbis they were harvesting their dourra
(mibet), rather a dwarf variety, but the heads web filled.
They generally cut the ears off first, and then the
straw, but some people cut down the whole plant at
once, and in all cases they thresh it out on the spot.
Camels and donkeys were eating their fib of it, and
there seemed to be much shedding and waste of the
grain, though the straw did not look ripe. The thresh
ing process was very picturesque; two buffaloes and
three cows we saw in one place driven in a circle
over the dourra, while a boy with a rake gathered back
the ears which had been pushed out of reach of the
animals' feet ; the beasts were muzzled, contrary to the
Jewish law, an unnecessary precaution, as there were
plenty of smab boys with nothing to do but to look
after the cattle, all the younger children being un
clothed because of the heat. On the 24th of January,
lupins, with blue and white flowers, were the common
crop on the Nile mud close to the water's edge, and
looked very pretty. Wheat was also a good deal
dibbled in on such spots, with a kind of broomrape
(Orobanche) growing amongst it, no doubt a parasite,
as ab of that family are. The date palms often grew
in clusters of seven or more from one root-centre, and
their curves and feathery tops were most elegant.

132 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The Nile here got much narrower, and its band of
cultivation also decreased with the smaller population.
The natives were much like chbdren in their ways. I
was often surrounded by women when wandering along
the shores, who pubed me to pieces in the most
amiable way, shouting with laughter at gloves or
boots; they bked me to hold their bttle slippery
black babies, which always reminded me of small black
pigs, so round and pretty were they. The women
wore nose-rings and glass bead necklaces, with their
hair plaited tight in many small tags or tabs; I
believe it was always done freshly when they married.
They were most anxious to please, and K they saw me
pick any flower or pod would go off and collect a
whole bundle of the same for me. A party of them
employed themselves in teaching my father to make
flat stones skip over the water's surface, duck and
drake fashion, shouting with laughter and clapping
their hands at every failure or success. ,
At Silsibs we were hurried on again by one of those
vexatious winds that always came when we wanted to
stay, and which went down as soon as we wished to go
on, but we stayed some hours at Kom Ombo, the double
temple, one of the most beautiful in all Egypt ; it is
full of colour, and stands grandly on the edge of a
cliff, commanding a very beautiful distant curve of the
river, desert and cultivation mixed, with a rosy hill in
the far distance. It reminded us of a Ehine castle as
we first saw it half hidden by the morning mists above
us, the river washing away the cliff on which it stands
gradually but steadby ; haK the huge Pylon was already
gone, and the other half actually hanging over the
water ; the portico is of noble ^proportions, one of the

I R. Pheni Spiers.

A FRIENDLY AUDIENCE.

Page 133.

IV

Egypt 13:

faben stones of the architrave measuring twenty-three
feet and more in length.
A brisk wind made us unfurl our big sail, and
carried us in a few hours to Assooan, — the far Syene,
now a cobection of mud huts and bazaars fub of
strange wbd people from the interior, selling ostrich
feathers and elephants' tusks; we noticed fifty skin
packages, each containing four of these tusks, lying on
the shore for shipment, and so heavy that my father
and Mr. S. could not hft one of them, though using
ab their united force ; slaves were also said to be sold
here, but it was ibegal and was not done openly.
Enormous granite boulders were strewn about the
river all round us, some of them covered with hiero-
glyphical inscriptions, and the channel was narrowed by
the island of Elephanta. We spent the morning there
among a most amusing crowd of little imps with
three tufts on their heads, like Grimaldi, with some
leather fringe and glass beads for their sole clothing ;
they had at first but one word in their mouths — " back
sheesh," but were not otherwise annoying ; they roared
with laughter at the sketch Mr. S. made of them and
me, it set their tongues free, and they chattered bke
monkeys ; I imitated them, which made them mimic
me in return, and we parted excebent friends, and lost
the hateful word " backsheesh " altogether.
Amongst the boulders and yellow sand, which
reminded me of the landscapes the Chinese paint on
rice paper, we afterwards wandered out to the necro-
pobs of the desert, and saw the unfinished obebsk,
some ninety feet long but still undetached, at the foot
of the rock from which it had been cut. The great
field of granitic rock at Assooan would well repay the

134 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
closest examination of geologists, abundant cases occur
in it of injection (before the heat which formed it had
abated) of other substances into its cracks. In one
place a very fissile and soft slate had interposed
between two beds of granite, in many granite or an
albed rock was apparently injected while in fusion ;
pure white quartz with feldspar, which was rose-
coloured when in contact with the walls of the crack,
ran through a considerable range, with a breadth of
six inches to a foot. My father' observed that feldspar
alone was very frequent in veins, and always rose-
coloured, and the rock from which the obelisk was
cut had more than half its material of this substance.
The sand was thickly sprinkled with pretty pebbles of
carneban, jasper, and agate, all most tempting to an
amateur collector of a frivolous nature bke myself, and
our cabin was getting rapidly filled with those rather
ponderous curiosities; a less objectionable taste than
that of our French companion, who used to shoot bttle
birds and try the experiment of drying them under
the seats and sofa cushions, to save himseK the trouble
of " degorging " them, until my father ordered them
out into his own cabin one day, leaving his partner
there, Mr. S., to settle the rest.
A large American dahabieh had reached Assooan
before us, and had consequently the right of precedence
up the cataract. At first the Sheik swore it was too big
and could not go, but the owner, being the American
Consul, compebed him to tack; which they did for
two hours, then wrecked the big boat on one desert
island, and us on another. The Eeis of the cataract
swore he would go no farther, and waved off his attend
ants (some hundred imps and demons, black, white,

IV

Egypt 135

red, and every possible intermediate shade of colour),
and they all evaporated, some under the water, some
over or under the rocks, till the place seemed as thickly
covered with them as they were with flies. Brother
Jonathan being enraged sent into Assooan for the Pasha,
about a mile's walk, and in a bttle while His Highness
arrived with his secretary, and the Eeis was ordered
to move them on the next day ; he had been smoking
the pipe of sulkiness with us meanwhile, and was a
nice mild old man, a cousin of our captain, who with
all our other sailors belonged to Assooan. But there
was etiquette even at the First Cataract, and our small
boat had to keep behind the other, so there we stuck
for the night, no great grievance, with the purest air
and water, and debcious warmth and quiet (all the
natives had gone back to their villages), a bright full
moon, and pleasant company, for my father had given
an English colonel and his wife a lift with us as
far as Philse, as their boat could go no farther ; they
were to return overland on camel or donkey back.
The basalt rocks were wonderful, and the golden sand
pleasant to rest on. Next morning brought the
savages back in force, hooting, howling, chattering,
screaming, and they were tied to the boats again, while
some old men with long whips, perching themselves on
high rocks (web out of reach of the others), were gesti
culating and flogging violently in the air. After
another mbe they contrived to revenge themselves on,
the hated Yankee boat by wrecking her again on a
rock, and knocking a hole in her, letting in the water
up to the cabin flooring ; all the stores were soaked,
and we thought she would have been lost. It was a
grand scene, huge boulders scattered and piled up in

136 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
every direction, like the pebbles on a sea shore, and
the water rushing and dancing in twenty different
channels amongst them, with smooth hills of golden
sand in the background, also patched over with huge
masses of dark granite boulders.
All the savages, as our Frenchman called them,
paddled about in and out of the water, discovering and
collecting treasures among the bottles and tin boxes
of spoiled food which had been tossed overboard.
One party near us had found a wine bottle fub of water
with a sbght flavour of wine in it : they tasted it,
then stopped to think, then poured a little out and
tasted it again, hoping by degrees to get rid of the
water and find the wine pure underneath; they got quite
angry with it at last, and carried off the bottle on the
end of a long spear, empty : they were very merry and
entertaining to watch. I wandered about over the
rocks amongst them without the least fear; my father
and his two English companions meanwhile had been
working like navvies with their sleeves tucked up,
baling out the water and patching up the wrecked New
Yorker, tbl at last she floated again, and was hauled
up the last cataract, no easy task, in safety ; one rope
only going crack, whbe a north wind filling out part
of our half-furled sab helped us. What a display of
limbs and muscles there was ! But one of the four
captains of the cataract seemed to me to do half of the
whole work, he was the tallest man I ever saw, in
short white muslin trousers and waistcoat, and the
blackest of arms and legs coming out of them; he
was everywhere at once, and made the most miraculous
jumps from rock to rock, always trying to keep hands
and feet at the widest distance apart from one another,

iv . Egypt 137
bke a cat which is thrown from the house roof. He
sprained his wrist, however, by these feats of agrbty,
and I bound it up with arnica after the excitement
was over, feebng I was doing homage to a hero, on
which His Magnificence uttered the one word
" backsheesh ! " and the dream vanished.
After this all the howlers vanished also, and
perfect calm ensued as we floated gently on to the island
of the gods, the very Eeiligen Hallen of Mozart, and
where his glorious song, " 0 Isis and Osiris," ought to
have been sung 2000 years before it entered into the
mind of the composer to write it. Philse was even
more enchantmg than I expected, with its wall of
rocky mountains and boulders enthroning it all round
in almost a supernatural stillness, — not a soul but
ourselves remained at the island. Its temples are curi
ously irregularin their relation to one another. Every
thing is disjointed and unconnected, and yet forms a
harmonious whole, thanks to a few palms, tamarisks,
and the surrounding river scenery. Those huge figures
might have been scratched on the walls by some
giant chbd, everything there is unreasonable and
without system, yet all this makes it the more
captivating. The Japanese say, only dull people make
anything in dupbcate, because they have not two ideas,
and there is some truth in the saying. It was the
last day of January, and yet warm as summer; we
saw the sun set and the moon rise, and could hardly
persuade ourselves to leave the grand old temples
for food dr rest, yet our architect told us they were
in quite a debased style, only about 150 years B.C. !
We hurried on the next day, leaving our friends
to ride back to Assooan, and hastened to the Second

138 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Cataract, passing temple after temple on our way ; the
sunshine and blue sky were always glorious, though
the nights were still often cold. One day we saw
seven crocodbes, looking like rocks or shadows on the
sand ; we were disputing if they really were crocodiles,
when the huge creatures curved their backs with a
violent effort, raised themselves on what our French
man cabed their "pattes," and slid slowly into the
water, as a fat lady descends from her carriage, with
a certain waddle and air of importance.
Nubian women are often handsome, very fond of
ornaments, and like showing them off ; one grand lady
at Korosko had three gold wheels with coral pendants
on her forehead, a gold nose -ring like a double
trumpet, two necklaces, one of shuttle-shaped onyx
stones with coral and silver between, and splendid
sbver bangles on arms and wrists. Another had gold
and silver rings and coins plaited in her innumerable
tabs of hair, which gave me the idea of never being
undone, but simply soaked with castor oil occasionally ;
she was sitting on the steps of a sakkiah or native
machine for raising water, flogging the beasts who
turned it, and her baby was seated near her on the
sand, a perfect lump of black flies, and so completely
hidden by them that one could only discover it was a
baby by its general shape and happy childish noises.
These young creatures were very droll, with their hair
in three knobs bke clowns in a pantomime. I very
nearly bought one one day at the mother's wish in
return for two empty reels of cotton and a button, to
my father's intense horror, not decreased when he was
told I wished to hang it up to the cabin ceiling to act
as a fly-trap ; the button and reels would have been

iv Egypt 139
probably offered to the next boat as antiquities for
sale. The only flowers I ever saw in this tropical part
of our voyage were a beautiful lilac ipomsea with
passion-flower leaves, and the common Euphorbia
Indica, with its great pods of thistledown and floury
leaves and stalks, the gum of which can be used to
cover iron and protect it from rust under the sea.
We had been looking a long while through glasses
at the distant hills for Aboo Simbel, when all in a
moment we discovered the four gigantic figures of
Eameses II. calmly looking down on us from just
above our heads, bathed in the golden sunset rays, and
half smothered by golden sand ; we all shouted with
delight at finding them, and the sailors cabed out
" backsheesh ! " and got it. Soon after that we reached
Wady Halfah, and mounted to the basalt rocks of
Abooseer, finding interesting dust-heaps and broken
tbes belonging to cities whose very names are lost,
and the most extraordinary view of river and rocks,
ab higgledy-piggledy, covering miles of space below us
and extending into the far distance, a few tamarisk
bushes alone breaking the hard contrast of the colouring
between the gold-coloured sand and black rocks. My
father cabed these rocks sandstone in horizontal strata,
mixed with a pebbly conglomerate, but all were very
friable, and with them were thin strata of black and red
highly crystallised ironstone, assuming the strangest
contorted forms, sometimes as thin as paper and
crumpled like it, sometimes in nodules like the Sussex
ironstone. The Nbe had cut through all this, but found
the ironstone under it too tough, though its current had
for ages with the help of its boulders (brought down

140 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
by floods) been shattering the hard whin or basalt bed
into innumerable black groups of islands, through
which its divided waters rush on bke a mbl stream ;
it seemed ab confusion as far as the eye could see, the
river of the most intense blue, except when broken by
foam and emerald green shadows, the rocks of dark
madder brown and purple, while the sand was of a
most dazzbng apricot colour. I found the colours
almost impossible to imitate, but liked even my own
crude attempts in pure tints better than our academician
friend's usual mixture of Prussian blue, Vandyke
brown, brown pink, and yellow ochre.
Wady Halfah was a very poor place, but the
people seemed a contented good-humoured race. Our.
Frenchman went on shore with his revolver, and was
much disgusted not to find them tarred and feathered,
and having no inlaid arms to seb : he said it was " a
place the most savage and inhabited by imbecbes ! "
We saw three women grinding at a handmbl, all
squatted on the ground round it, working with their
left hands and pouring haK handfuls of wheat in
through the axle of the top stone as fast as it needed
feeding ; the grain came out well ground upon the lower
stone, which was formed into a circular trough. They
showed us also a hobowed stone with a round one
beside it for milling the meal and water and pound
ing it up together into a sort of polenta or porridge.
We stayed three days at Aboo Simbel, painting and
studying the noble temples and figures, which alone
well repaid the whole expense and trouble of a Nile
voyage : the four great figures of Barneses II. seemed
to me the finest monuments in the world, they are
carved out of and on the face of the rock ; the material,

iv Egypt 141
as shown in the fragments of one Colossus that is
destroyed downwards to its knees, being friable as Nile
mud, though its grains are of indestructible silex, trans
lucent when seen through a magnifying-glass. The
figures are sixty feet high, and the hieroglyphics of
the entablature are as sharp as on the day they were
cut, though the grand cornice, which no doubt once
overhung them, is gone, with its cartouches and asps,
and the row of monkeys under it is much damaged
by its fab : the countenances of the four great Eameses
retam ab their original expression of calm dignity, as
K superior to the convulsions of thirty-three centuries.
In some of the side chambers of the temple within,
the intagbos on the walls are only marked by black
lines, as K the workmen had been interrupted after
it was planned by the architect, and the plan seems
inferior to that of the entrance, where the grand figures
of Eameses in battles and in triumph are carved, the
horses of his chariot seeming actually to breathe with
bfe and energy. The cebing of the entrance is
pamted only with six vultures, ab formed as if their
heads issued from an egg, and winged bke the winged
globe, which latter appears only in a few unimportant
places. Over the principal figure in the wall hovers
a demon, with the left wing drooping, and a man in
his claws.
The depth of the interior caves from the entrance
is nearly 200 feet, and the great door is buried
in the sand drift to within a yard or so of the top ;
to me the effect was perfectly magical, as I looked
from just within the entrance at the double rows of
gigantic Osiris figures down the nave of the huge
temple, leading into the very depths of darkness (for

142 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
only in the glare of noonday could one see anything
beyond them), afterwards turning round to look out
at the pure sapphire sky, and the glittering gold of
the sand, which positively blinded one with its re
flected sunshine under the carved cebing of the great
doorway ; against this one of our grinning black sabors
was resting and playing my guardian angel, making
a combined study of both nature and art. There is a
hawk-eyed deity over the door outside, whose human
figure is modelled with the grace of a Greek sculptor.
The other temple at Ipsambool is decidedly ugly.
My father took a bath in the Nile whbst I was at
work, in spite of the warning of Achmet, who told him
" that very morning a crocodile came and snatched a
chicken out of the cook's hands while he was plucking
it in the smab boat, and if he did not believe him
there were the feathers;" my father did not believe him,
in spite of the visible feathers. We drifted slowly
down the river from Aboo Simbel, often sticking in the
mud, and with ab the men in the water pushing and
haubng us off again ; stopping days too at all the old
Nubian temples, with plenty of time to enjoy and
sketch them.
Our old pilot afterwards took Mr. Lear up the
river, and, according to him, described me in the
following words : " This Bint was unlike most other
Engbsh Bints, being, firstly, white and lively ; secondly,
she was gracious in her manner, and of kind disposi
tion ; thirdly, she attended continually to her father,
whose days went in rejoicing that he had such a Bint ;
fourthly, she represented ab things on paper, she
drew all the temples of Nubia, ab the sakkiahs, and
all the men and women and nearly all the palm trees,

IV

Egypt 143

she was a valuable and remarkable Bint ! " He
rather overdid my powers of drawing, for the
sakkiahs were innumerable almost as the palm trees,
many of them standing stbl for want of hands to work
them, ab the men capable of work having been taken
off by the reigning Pharaoh to Cairo, and only old men,
women, and children were left, too weak to raise enough
corn for their own consumption, far less to export or
sell for others : with better irrigation and cultivation
in that climate they might have grown coffee, bananas,
sugar, almost anything. We could buy mutton, ppor little
black- woobed skeletons, for twenty-two shillings each,
weighing about thirty-five or forty pounds.. Though
there were so few of the sakkiahs working we were seldom
out of hearing of them, and the noisy droning they
made was very wearisome : one horse-engine would have
done the work of fifty, and have released one hundred
oxen and fifty of these poor labourers for other and
more important work. There were fewer shaddofs in
Nubia than in Egypt, probably from the banks being
higher ; some were in five stages, with a man on each
and ten feet between them, thus lifting the water forty
or fifty feet above the river level.
The pbot said I drew all the temples, and certainly
I tried, but will not try to describe that which has
been so thoroughly done by many others, including the
inevitable Murray ; the people and country I enjoyed
far more than the old stones, also the wonderful children,
whose whole costume consisted of a few beads strung on
odd bits of string ; oyster shells, amber, glass, agates,
buttons, empty reels of cotton, carnebans, and even
necks of bottles were worn as charms. At Kalabsheh
we took another day and a half; the great temple

144 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
was a perfect Alpine climb of great loose stones^ but
of a very late period, only a Eoman bubding, our artist
said ; it had some remarkable examples of modern art,
outlines of dahabiehs and tourists scratched on it in
chalk, which the natives insisted on our admiring ; in
Bayt el Welly the carved pictures were reaby exquisite,
in one of the chariots one quite felt the jolting and
speed, and the reason why the warrior was holding on
so tightly to keep himself steady, whbe the charioteer
was leaning forward with his loose reins.
Dakkeh I thought a stbl more picturesque place,
with its black sheep and people huddled up in black
woollen blankets, but Gertassee was the lovebest of
all ; only six columns left with one huge stone resting
on the tops of two of them, placed on the summit of a
hill standing quite alone, with other hibs behind it and
the blue river making a grand sweep beneath, and wind
ing away into the far distance, edged with palm trees ;
the colours were ab so pure and debcate it seemed too
lovely for reabty, bke one of Claude's small pictures :
here a nice black woman found her way up with her
baby and sat by me as I worked, she examined the
contents of all my pockets, but put everything care
fully back. She feb in love with my paint brush, till
I told her it was made of camel's -hair, when she
thought less of it, " it was such a common animal, if it
had only been a horse's or a pig's ! "
The wind was against us, and we stuck continually
in the mud, and walked a great part of the last
day down towards Philse, near which there are planta
tions of doum and date palms, castor oil, tobacco, and
corn. Phbse looked even more lovely than when we
were there before, and we anchored three days on

IV  Egypt  145
its sand, and painted indefatigably, but it was not so
quiet as before, a party of Americans (three dahabiehs
fub) having come overland from Assooan to picnic there.
Among them was a lady with a baby three months old,
in a hammock swung between two camels ; and a pair
who went about arm in arm over all the heaps of
stones, dressed in Worth's very latest fashions ; also a
young man in a complete suit of cineraria colour, from
stockings to cap, with his mother, wearing the most
beautiful snow-white ringlets all over her head, who
sat herself down at once within a few yards of the
bubding strangers call Pharaoh's Bedstead, and began
sketching it, and what is more, got it all in to her
smab sheet of paper in very tolerable perspective,
a feat that even Mr. S. with his camera could not
have performed. " Cineraria " came and guessed I
was Engbsh, and said he would like to introduce me
to " Mother," who I found was Mrs. Skinner of Boston,
and that he was " Frank," and their genial characters
and enjoyment of everything made them at once our
friends, and they are mine stib. But this Yankee
incursion brought a tribe of idle " backsheesh " hunters,
the place lost half its charm, and we fled to the
mainland and wandered amongst the huge granite
boulders, on one of which my father found the
cartouche of Psammetichus the Second, who lived
600 B.C., together with the Smiths and Browns of
many succeeding centuries. The cartouche- had been
scraped flat before it was engraved on, and showed
the red feldspar, whbe the rest of the rock was black
with age, and the twenty-fourth-century-old scraping
was not discoloured : query, how old was the rock ?
The views were quite fairylike from these main-
L

146 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
land groups of boulders, but our French friend found
we were " not to be supported " for dawdbng as we
did, and that three whole days at Phbse were
impossible ; so we started sooner than we liked, and
shot the rapids without difficulty, though much howl
ing and noise were made over the six or seven feet of
fall (the only difficult bit). We rested about five hours
at Assooan, then came the great Edfoo, with its
stupendous portico : then El Kab, fossils and limestone
mountains, more sticking in the mud and contrary
winds, and at last we found ourselves anchored
amongst the other dahabiehs and mosquitoes off Luxor,
with a pile of letters and papers from home ; and
took coffee with Lady Duff Gordon, who had a circle
of admirmg Arabs round her, and gave my father a
chibouk, bghted by her own fair hand.
At Assooan we had lost our pet black sailor boy,
always so graceful and good-humoured and strong.
The year before he had been home there for a day's
hobday, and had married a wife of eleven years old, and
left the same day to return to Cairo ; this year he
went back to see her during our three days' stop at
Philse, then pretended to be taken ill and did not return,
but sent his one-eyed brother in his place, and the
voices all sang out of tune, and the oars all splashed ;
it was lucky that we seldom stuck on mud-banks
afterwards, as none of the other men could have
pushed us off as he did, and we missed him per
petually. His brother was strong too, he and Hassan
had a race one day after me, to carry me into the
boat not only through the water, but over as much
mud as possible, as if they liked the work, and could
not have too much of it; after which they caught

IV

Egypt 147

up my father, singing, both themselves and he, at
the pitch of their voices ab the way. Then the
Frenchman insisted on riding his donkey into the
water and up to the boat, as he could not bear ces
sauvages to touch him; it was great fun, for he
kicked and flourished his cane at them, and just as
he got near the boat the donkey began to lie down
for a rob, and if the " savages " had not caught hold of
him in time and hauled him in, he would have had
a good ducking. How they laughed ! And he himself
could not help laughing too : he had many good
points about him, and when at last he had made up
his mind to escape from our slow boat and slower
society, and return to Cairo by steamer, he took some
pains to part friends, and actuaby offered to lend my
father money K he wanted it ; though he could not
speak Engbsh he understood a good deal, and had
read all sorts of old books, including Marlowe's Faust
and Tristram Shandy, which he said was the best of
all novels, query, had he read it ? I confess to being
doubtful. We worked hard at Thebes, where the distances
are too great for hurry, having to ride from one great
sight to the other over the burning plain, on which the
harvest was then going on : the first day we " did " the
tombs of the kings, the Memnonium and Colossi ; I felt
quite fit to be pickled and mummified when I escaped
from the tombs, which were far too archaeological for
modern humanity. I hate walking where I cannot
see my feet, or being hauled about even by the
gentlest of Arab guides, but as I fell flat on my
back once, argument and remonstrance were of no use,
and I was hauled in by one hand, holding a candle

148 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
in the other; of course we were astounded by the
amount of careful painting done in miles of darkness,
before electric bghts or gas were invented, and how we
rejoiced when we got into the air and sun again ! We
enjoyed our walk over the outside of the mountain
hugely ; it is most elegant in form, and its colours per
fectly gorgeous, the rock is a sort of Jurassic bmestone,
compact and spbntery, and full of fossils. A steep
zigzag led to the great green plain, all honeycombed
with humbler tombs, and so on to the grand Memno-
nium, with its huge fallen statue of gray granite.
Everything in Thebes appeared too stupendous, it
seemed to blunt my poor wits and pencil too, no
cutting could get the wretched thing to a point that
would draw straight ; and then the flocks of Americans
and " backsheesh " people drove all peace away. The
little women of eleven or twelve years old, who carried
water jars on their heads, only supported by the palm
of one hand, keeping up with our fast donkeys at a
run, were very bewitching, with their bright eyes and
easy graceful movements. They said they were ab
ladies, not girls, meaning they were married. " You
got wife ? " they asked me. " Oh yes, you have in
house in England ! " as if I locked up my husbands at
home as they do their wives here. But I did not form
a high opinion of these young persons, and they and
the donkey-boys would gamble away every penny one
gave them as fast as they got it.
All this racket prevented any good drawing of
complicated architecture, with no time at ab to do it
in, and I left it to my friend Mrs. Skinner, whose
patience and courage never left her; but the grand
statues sitting so calmly amidst all the marvellous

iv Egypt 149
green crops of the plain, and backed by that lovely
mountain, were always delightful to look at. Karnak
would have taken months in itself to enjoy and study
thoroughly, and was as hopeless to sketch as Medeenet
Haboo, whose interior sanctum is of the finest rose
granite, while its columns still show the brightest
colours and are finely polished.
I was trying to paint a bit of this exquisite
building, when Lucie Gordon came and sat by me ;
she talked in her old clever way and smoked, but
soon got so tired I thought she would have fainted
as Omar and I helped her over the stones back to
her donkey; however, she could not have done even
this when we saw her on our way up ; she was
idobsed by her faithful Omar, and by ab the natives
in Thebes, whom she doctored and treated as friends ;
yet it must have been a dreary existence for a think
ing person to live thus among people so little removed
from animals.
Once while painting, and quite absorbed in my
work at Karnak, a man sat down close to me, and I
said " Good Morning" without looking up, tib Hassan
pubed my dress, and, oh horror ! the man was holding
a huge golden snake by the tail, a yard of shining,
pobshed, sbppery snake, quite straight and looking at
me ! I shouted and sprang away, and Hassan drove
off the two wretched brutes. They take out the fangs
of these tame snakes, but I hate even the sight of
them now, though I used to like poor Lucie's pet when
I was a child. My father felt the heat so much (the
thermometer was eighty-two in his cabin after dark)
that he decided to leave Thebes after a week, much to
the disappointment of Mr. S., and I don't wonder, for the

150 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
studies there were endless, but I became really anxious
about my father's constantly parched throat, he could
scarcely swallow after half-an-hour without water, and
he got into the same low state about himself he was in
when we left Cairo three months before. I felt I had
had a mere taste of the wonders of Thebes, and longed
to return some day with a tent and camp out on the
other side of the river, somewhere within sight of the
great sitting figures who were then presiding over the
abundant harvest, to see them in the burnt-up summer,
or among the floods of autumn, as well as again on
their green velvet carpet, whose pbe was in the right
proportion to their gigantic size. As many as forty or
fifty corn stalks went to a single plant, and beans and
lentils in the same luxuriance ; what a rich plain it
was ! Then the huge Memnon lying on his broken
back, and wondering what the Christian barbarians
had done with his hand and arm. And the glorious
buildings around him looking small in comparison, and
behind that again the grand old mountain, its broad
natural terraces pierced through and through with what
were mere gimlet holes in proportion to the mountain
itself, but which appeared to us mortals great under
ground galleries and palaces. In these had thousands
of the unknown and forgotten dead been stored through
centuries, to be now broken up and sold again in bits —
hands, heads, and feet, by all the juvenile thieves of
the plain for a few pence, together with scarabaei and
blue glass mummies from Birmingham, at wonderfully
cheap prices, considering from how far they came.
On the outside of that same mountain was a most
beautiful portico, leading to a set of rooms Cleopatra is
said to have lived in, all of the finest and whitest

iv Egypt 151
alabaster, and painted with the purest and faintest
tints to correspond ; it is one of the finest gems of
colour in Egypt, but "debased" decidedly in point
of architecture. We stopped a day at Keneh and rode to Denderah,
a great temple full of columns, sunk in sand, with
huge Isis heads for capitals, and much colour, and after
wards we bonised Keneh, the outside of which is very
picturesque, with " cafes " shaded by trees and striped
curtains hanging over the wabs, and large herds of
buffaloes sleeping in the water beneath, only the tops of
their heads to be seen. We rode to Abydus another
day, which was far too perfect, owing to its long
covering of sand, to please me, but the ride through the
rich fields of corn and poppies and lupins was most
enjoyable, and the air delicious.
After Thebes, we saw great flocks of brown sheep
and goats, and all sorts of creatures, including young
camels (the prettiest of all young things), and I longed
to hang up a mat and stay there a week to draw
them, only I was not Eosa Bonheur, and could not have
done it, even if I could have stayed. On the 11th of
March I was sitting on the upper deck watching- a
wonderful round cloud tinted, like mother-of-pearl, from
brightest green to rose, under it another slate -gray
cloud, with rosy horns streaming out behind it from
the setting sun : ab seemed calm, when we saw a small
boat in fub sail flying towards us, and in a moment
we were twisted round and driven on land by a
sudden squab, the air had become dark with sand,
and the river was ab waves. There was a regular
scrimmage, and screaming, and scrambling to get our
head the right way, and after that we rocked at anchor

.152 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
incessantly a whole night and a long day ; the clouds
of sand blowing across the river quite hid the water,
but we took a stroll on land, and had much talk with
the natives, who were harvesting, and who made us
taste all their grain. My father told them stories in
English, which delighted them, and they patted him
on the back when he told them how much better
their beans would be with bacon etc., etc. It was
very funny to see the grave way they listened always,
and then applauded, without understanding a single
word. They liked his friendly trusting manner.
We stopped to see the caves of Beni Hassan, and
found cool air up amongst them. They are said to be
very old, about as old as the Isaac of the Bible, and
have simple Doric columns cut in the solid rock, possibly
copied by the Greeks at iEgina and in the Parthenon ;
the other columns are purely taken from the lotus.
There are few sculptures, but much painting on the
wabs, — scenes of everyday bfe, such as a clever boy of
ten might have painted, of games, of wrestling, running,
and even leap-frog, and the saying that " shams do
not last " was proved untrue there, where one of
the Doric pblars of bmestone had actually been painted
to look like red granite some 4000 years before; the
dates in Egypt quite suffocate one.
One morning we were surprised to see Achmet and
the Eeis go on shore amicably together, after incessant
squabbling, for a walk, but a few moments afterwards a
wild head with a mop of hair came suddenly out of
the water and up the boat's side, and its owner seated
himself on the edge and tied himself into a petticoat
which he had brought on the top of the mop, and then
proceeded to kiss all the sailors, who did not enjoy it,

IV

Egypt 15;

whbe we shrank closer into our cabin shell. The poor
fellows all gave him some coppers, and after he had
administered another hugging all round, he took off
and folded up his petticoat, put it on his head, and
dived and swam off to a boat fub of corn near us, to
levy the same tax. They said he was mad, and conse
quently a saint, and thus gained his own livelihood; after
his departure our superior officers returned on board.
We stopped at Memphis, and rode about the
wonderful palm forest, all strewn with statues and bits
of polished granite ; one large one of Barneses II. lying
flat on its nose, which is of the same shape as that at
Aboo Simbel, perfectly beautiful but a trifle too long,
perhaps, and with an absurd look of the Prince of
Wales about it. Mr. S. said it was intended to be
looked at from below, so that if we were to stick
H.E.H. on the top of an exceedingly high pedestal he
might perhaps look beautiful and majestic too1, who
knows ? I sat down on the ground to make a sketch
of the distant Sakkarah Pyramids, and presently I
found a long procession of ants walking over me, and
discovered myself to be in the middle of an ant-road
of about thirty yards long, a clear well-trodden path.
My sailor wanted to break it up, but I would not let
him, which pleased some old Arabs near, and they
showed me the end of the road, where all the little
creatures took their loads into a very small hole, and
disappeared ; almost as curious and difficult a work as
the pyramids themselves, about which we, the higher
educated animals, think so much, and a far more useful
work, for the pyramid merely sheltered the bones of one
man, the ants' nest sheltered the food of a whole colony,
and themselves too. ' I found another colony of ants

154 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the next day at the very top of old Cheops's tomb,
living probably on the remains of Frank picnics.
It is only two hours row from Memphis to
Ghizeh, but the wind rose and we kept sticking fast
all night, and though we had sent donkeys on and break
fasted at five, we did not land from the small boat till
nine, but the day was cool and the ride most enjoyable,
on real Cairo beasts again, those grand donkeys, so fresh
and strong. People make much unnecessary fuss about
getting up the great Pyramid, I did it easily in twenty
minutes, taking rests by the way. I came down much
quicker, giving a hand to a strong fellah on each side,
and jumping from step to step as London children do
down the steps before the house doors ; by keeping-
one's feet well together nothing is easier. The view from
the top of this great monument of barbaric power is
certainly worth the climb, all the other pyramids
look smab by its side, and the desert seems endless, the
Nile banks a mere thread of green ; but we did not
expect to find so many other curious temples and
caves in the immediate neighbourhood, ahd I envied
Piazzi Smythe, who had spent some months there and
had left a most agreeable character behind him in the
memories of the Arabs we had about us. My father
went inside, but I, with my old disbke of dark places,
stayed at the door, and made myself cross reading the
bombastic inscription placed over the entrance by
Lepsius the Prussian, — and I fought all the Arabs who
tried to extort backsheesh from an unprotected female,
tbl they turned and fled, thinking I also was mad, and
therefore entitled to unbounded respect. The Sphinx
has always been much flattered in his portraits, and
the straight lines of the mouth and nose are most

IV

Egypt 155

disagreeable, but the temple near it, of green basalt,
which is of much later date, is magnificent, every stone
pobshed like glass.
We were not sorry to get back to our old quarters
in the Hotel du Nil at Cairo, and to sleep in beds
instead of on hard shelves, and to have Mr. Palgrave to
talk cleverly to us all dinner time instead of perpetual
boat-grievances or archaeological arguments; he had
been to Stamboul and all sorts of places since we left,
and was just starting up to Thebes to settle some dis
pute between Mariette Bey and Mustapha Agha, who had
been beaten by the former for stealing some antiquities
the European thought it his especial right to steal. All
seemed just as we left it. The expected Engbsh box had
not arrived, and we went to Suez to wait for a week
and give it more time ; the change did my father a
world of good, and we wandered on the sands for hours
together, picking up an endless variety of sea shells
(but all dead), from the huge clam to the fragile little
buba, which looks bke a bubble of soapy water or a
debcately-curled white rose-leaf, which one can scarcely
pick up without breaking; we found also plenty of
the staircase- and steeple-shebs, picking up at least
twenty different varieties the first morning, and were
as happy as English children at the sea-side, only
wanting wooden spades to complete the blusion. I
thought I had seen some bright colours before, but none
could compete with those on the sand and shallow
water and distant Sinai mountains, as seen from our
window at noonday at Suez ; a mother-of-pearl ear-
shell gives the nearest idea of all its pure rose, crimson,
lilac, blue, green, and yellow tints, all blended so softly
one cannot tell where one colour begins and the other

.156 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
ends. The blue of the sea is so deep that it makes
the sky look pale, and the sand is so dazzling that it
causes the clouds above to reflect the gold in their
under shadows, and over the deep green parts of the
water I have seen the white sea-gulls hovering with
breasts green from these same reflections.
The hotel was American, its few guests were Anglo-
Indians^ with regiments of what they called f' boys " —
like bundles of white cabco with unpleasant faces — to
wait upon them; they put down enormous lumps of
meat all at once to cool, with plates of soup which had
been already cooled in the orthodox fashion of ancient
Britain. One dogmatical old gentleman called out
" boy " and then " plate," at which the bundles rushed
at his ; then " curry," and they rushed again, and
then he uttered his only long sentence, " Curry ? when
I say curry, I don't mean rice, d'ye hear, boy ? " and
all the bundles looked penitent, and he said no more.
Suez was very quiet except on mab days, and then the
whole court in the middle of the hotel was filled with
" tiffin" tables, and the most motley crowd were drinking
champagne out of tumblers, and devouring Egyptian
food combined with pig's flesh and beer ; there was
a band and a singing woman to help to drown the
noise, and many flabby-looking women with screaming
babies and nurses, clothed in all manner of colours and
fancy dresses, including Chinese in high combs, who
looked as if they had just been rubbed off tea-cups. I
began to understand why they had washing rooms
in the hotel, a dozen washing-stands round one room !
Often 400 people landed in one day to take tiffin, and
then packed themselves into a train and went overland
to Alexandria.

iv Egypt 157
Then we became quiet again. The court when un
crowded was very pretty, full of oleanders, oranges,
and creepers, bordered too with boxes a yard high, filled
with mesembryanthemums covered with flowers of
many colours, hanging over the sides to the ground in
a rich thick mass of green resembling a box hedge,
and in the centre was a splashing fountain with
pyramids of pots of roses round it. They were making
the canal when we were in Suez, and a great many
Frenchmen were about the place ; one good work
had already been finished — the canal of sweet water
from the Nile. Camels and water-carriers were con
tinuaby filling skins with this water and taking them
about the town, a great boon to the inhabitants, who
had formerly but a very scant supply, and far to go to
fetch it, the Eed Sea being extremely salt, and the
sands covered with white crystals as soon as the
receding tide left it dry. We saw some men making
a big sab on the dry sand, using stones instead of pins
to keep the seams together, and one old man who was
plaiting cord to bind it with had fastened the ends
round his great toe to keep it steady, — why do we
Europeans neglect that useful member so much ? One
sees men admiring their feet in Egypt as ladies do
their hands at home.
We enjoyed our three hours of railway journey
back to Cairo exceedingly, the air was so fresh and
wholesome, and the scenery so curious — we passed only
two scraggy ghosts of trees all the way, but perfect
mountains of sand looking like yellow snow, with the
same smooth ups and downs and gray shadows ; there
were two stations in the desert, and at one they had a
flower garden with a tent over it, but the poor station-

158 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
master's wife looked as dried up as her plants ; she had
only two excitements daily, when the trains came in.
Camels still marched along that road, as a certain set
of old pilgrims believed the railways to be inventions of
the evil one, and were stib tramping along the old road
to Mecca (looking as strange in Cairo as we did) — long
haired skeleton men, hung over with dust- coloured
sheets, and looking terribly frightened in the streets,
where the children and dogs slunk away from them as
they would from ghosts ; poor things ! many would
probably accomplish their destiny and die on their
way to the Sacred City.
We used to get much amusement from shopping
in Cairo, and never would go to Frank shops where
there was no fun to be got. I wanted some pins, and
as I had found one reel of cotton in an old Turk's
stall, I thought I could get the other articles there
too, but had no word by which to describe them,
so both my father and myself took off our hats and
looked in the linings, which we generaby used as
pin-cushions, for the missing pin. It was just the,
right thing to have done, for the Turks themselves
always keep pins and needles in their turbans,
and the old man put up his hand and gravely
pubed out both these articles, enquiring which I
wanted, he then produced a piece of blue paper, with
a considerable variety of odd pins in it, vainly
endeavouring to drill them into straight bnes ; they
were like the sweepings of some continental railway
carriage, none of their heads would be accepted
by an English maidservant, and some had no heads
at all : I took as many as I could not do without,
paid a fancy price, and was thought a fool for not

iv Egypt 159
bargaining, but surely the scene was worth the
money ?
My father got depressed and ill again, waiting for
the box that never came, and we were glad to leave
Cairo for Alexandria, where the Briggs of the former
place told us we should be sure to find it, but the
Briggs of Alexandria swore he had sent it months ago
to his correspondents in Cairo, so we determined to
wait no longer shilly-shallying between them, and we
ordered it and our two portmanteaus to be sent to
Beyroot, and ourselves embarked for Syria.

CHAPTEE V
PALESTINE AND SYRIA
1866
Started with the smallest possible luggage" in a great
Eussian steamer for Jaffa, finding Frank Skinner and
his mother were to be our companions on board. We
were a merry bttle party, and we did our best to
understand the poor old captain, whose French was two-
thirds Eussian, an over-allowance of incomprehensibibty
quite impossible to fight against ; though he strove
hard to entertain us it required some tact to laugh
and cry in the right place. He showed us a quantity
of sketch-books filled by himself from his cabin
window with elaborately-finished pencil sketches, but
as he was perpetually thumbing and turning them
over, they were beginning to have marvellous atmo
spheric effects but very little outline. We stayed a
few hours at Port Said, looking at the big stones, and
when we reached Jaffa wondered how we should ever
get through the surf and rocks and the rogues at the
landing-place. We had almost given up trying in
despair when the first boat brought our remedy in
Hadji Ali, a dragoman we had seen on the Nile, who
was just packing off his party for Constantinople, and
had all his tents and horses ready to take us on. Of

*

chap, v Palestine and Syria 161
course he was delighted at a fresh start, and we to
find a protector in a man whose name was so well
known and spoken of, so he pboted us through the rocks,
surf, and streets, and out to the beautiful garden
plain beyond, where we found his late party taking
their last luncheon in his tents, and they gave him
the best of characters and to us some food, after which
we went to the Consulate to rest through the heat of
the day, while they packed themselves off.
The Consul himself had lately died, but his son was
efficient and hospitable, and had letters in his keep
ing for us. There was a young missionary woman
staying there who talked incessantly without stopping
to think or take breath, and I thought she must be
writing good bttle tracts for Messrs. Nisbet & Co. upon
the frivolities and utter un worthiness of travellers in the
Holy Land. She also seemed to derive much profitable
satisfaction from the contemplation of the hopeless
sibiness and levity of the young Consul's Greek step
mother, a girl of eighteen perhaps, who only knew a
few words of English, but wore a crinoline over her
baggy trousers, and, worse still, no widow's cap ; there
was not a single mark in her dress or manner to
show her late affliction! and as for her boots, poor
sinful child ! etc., etc. Meanwhile this pretty step
mother loaded me with oranges and lemons and sweet-
smelling flowers, and ended her frivolities by trying
on my hat, and running to look and laugh at herself
in the glass too ! I hoped she would soon find a
second husband, for the poor chbd must have been
very weary of that serious -minded and sour-faced
young person.
We took four or five hours riding to Eamleh,
M

1 62 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
across that wonderful garden behind, ' Jaffa and the
plain beyond. My father's horse was a real beauty,
gray, with its mane and tail dyed orange with henna,
it walked both swiftly and easily, with the reins
dangling loose on its neck ; mine did not go so fast but
made up for it by an easy little jog now and then :
the Hadji rode with us always, and was most agree
able and obliging and full of local information. He had
been three times to Mecca, and had travelled with
Lord Dufferin, the Prince of Wales, and all sorts of
great people, and had also been to England on visits to
some of them. From first to last he took the best of
care of us and our comfort in every way, he fed us
only too well, giving what was left to any children
or old people who might be near, and our tents
were most luxurious. No life can be more enjoyable
than the one we led with him, we had no cares,
as he thought of and paid for everything for £3 : 10s.
a day. Nine hours took us on to Jerusalem : there was a
constant procession of pilgrims all the way, mostly
Greeks or Eussians, and as their Easter is most con
veniently fixed a week later than ours, the two races
cannot quarrel quite so much as they would other
wise have done. Such figures were there, five on one
camel, old women in boxes slung on each side of a
mule, baskets full of young children, every kind of
costume, men with thorns on their hats, their hands full
of sticks and jars of water from the Jordan, where the
returning pilgrims had all been dipping. The ground
was carpeted with bright flowers, scarlet and pink
anemones ; blue, red, and yebow pimpernels, the most
lovely Phlox Brummondii, lilac and white cyclamen

v Palestine and Syria 163
and cistus, blue iris, cornflowers, geraniums and borage
as large as foxgloves, besides many others whose names
I did not know. We got to Jerusalem in good day
light, sent our horses round, and walked in by the
Jaffa gate and into the Sepulchre Church itseK — such
a fair outside -but so rubbishy within, though full of
picturesque bits. We then made our way through
the city and up to our tents on the Mount of Olives,
where the cook being drunk was sent down to the
guard-house for the night, and the Hadji turned up his
sleeves and cooked our dinner just as well as the cook
would have done, and then came and gossiped and
smoked with my father as usual. He was elder brother
to Lady Duff Gordon's faithful Omar, and very angry
with him for leaving his wKe and children and devot
ing himself as he did to her ladyship.
We could not rest, but walked up to the top of
the hill that same evening, and saw the wonderful red
and purple sunset clouds roll over the Dead Sea, and
the deep dark mountains beyond, reminding us of
Holman Hunt's wonderful picture of the Scapegoat,
perhaps the finest of modern Engbsh pictures.
The city and its position were much what I had
expected, but the details even more picturesque ; our
tents were on a ledge of the mountain, all among the
grand old obves, and a hundred yards above the garden
of Gethsemane, into which we might almost have
dropped a stone ; the whole line of the city wabs was
opposite us, and about on the same level, with the
famous Dome of the Eock in front ; we went all over
that exquisite bubding, the most elegant in the world
I think, an octagon all coated inside and out with
mosaics of fine tilework, and supported by pillars of

1 64 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
rare marbles, its dim light coming in through small
windows of semi-opaque glass, with only a very few
gems of colour in the centre of each, which glittered
like real jewels ; or through the four graceful horse-shoe
arched doors, from each of which we had the most
enchanting views of sky, landscape, or graceful buildings,
domes or minarets. The whole centre of the bubding
is occupied by the mysterious Eock, about which wise
men have disputed so much and so foobshly, and-
which is left rough except where it has been con
tinuaby kissed and rubbed by pilgrims, rich carpets
and curtains being festooned over it. Glorious old
olives and cypress trees border the broad steps and
path which lead to the mosque of el Aksa, and there
are many most curious bits there too, and capitals of
Solomon's (?) temple planted upside - down on its
columns, some of them looking very like Egyptian
ones. Every spot in Jerusalem has some legend attached
to it, real or invented, and the race of religious guides
were more intolerable than any we had encountered
before. The underground chapel called Mary's Tomb
is most picturesque, a deep broad flight of stone steps
leads to a perfect magazine of smab lamps of different
shapes ; it took some time to get one's eyes to see
in such darkness, and then a wonderful low-arched
chapel came out, full of odd corners and old Greek
paintings : but the priest who showed it got quite
angry at our lingering after he had taken his candle
round once, and more especiaby because another party
got in before he had shut the door. How the holy man
slammed it when he did get us out !
In the evening the Hadji had a lev^e in front of

v Palestine and Syria 1 65
his tent ; Arab gentlemen came with rags tied over
their heads with shabby bits of rope, and much coffee
was drunk, the end of which was that fourteen of
them consented to take charge of us the next morning
when we rode to Jericho. The Hadji found me
another horse, which could keep up better with my
father's, and the latter was somewhat excited by our
Sheik appearing in a pink satin robe on a mare of
inestimable value (as they say in the Arabian Nights),
the very sight of her was too much for Goldtab's
feebngs, but he behaved well, and we had no disturb
ances. The Sheik's lieutenant rode a foal of a year
and a half old, a lanky long-legged thing, which would
be a beauty some day ; it never tripped going up and
down those marble staircase roads, and it galloped like
the wind. When we got down to the plain our guards
amused us with some Astley's circus performances ;
many other wild men constantly appearing on the tops
of crags and out of holes, who seemed attached to our
own fourteen, and one nice fellow in a sheepskin
seemed especiaby appointed to collect flowers and
other curiosities for me, continually grinning and
saying, " raih ! "
We had our luncheon on the ruins of the " inn,"
probably the spot thought of in the parable of the Good
Samaritan, and said to be still famous for its thieves,
among whom we then were, and to whom we had
possibly paid blackmail ; the Hadji would not let us
linger, and put me back on my horse when I wanted
to walk, showing us blood on the road, where, he said,
they had been fighting the day before. Certainly I
saw that plainly enough, but do not mules sometimes
break their knees on those rough roads ? In this very

1 66 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Holy Land so many tales were told that one began to
be sceptical. The " wilderness " through which we
descended to the valley of Jordan was indeed stony,
with only a thin scattering of bitter herbs : sage,
lavender, thyme, cistus, and rosemary sprinkled over it,
looking black on the bleached rocks in the distance,
as K pepper had been shaken out of an ill filled
pepper-castor over them. The rolbng storm - clouds
were splendid, and we just escaped a heavy shower
before reaching our comfortable tents, pitched on the
top of one of the old mounds of pottery and refuse
from the city of Jericho, which are all that remain of
its former greatness.
We had thirty square mbes of croaking frogs all
round us, and under our feet the springs of El Sultan,
which bubbled out of the earth as clear as crystal,
but less cold, with large-leaved maiden-hair fern and
other luxuriant green things about them. The stream
from this source runs on through some miles of tangled
bushes and weeds to the Jordan, which is almost
hidden under its deep banks tbl it forms the Dead
Sea, whose golden setting of sand and white salt edge
no bving plant dare creep over. Beyond, on the
other side of the river, is more sand, leading up to the
purple mountains of Moab. Mr. Lear's picture of
this subject was most true, all but the near trees, which
in his drawing gave one an idea of timber and not
of the mere scrub seen on the spot. Our guardians
treated us to a sword dance at night in front of
my father's tent, lighted by torches and by the
moon above. Eight men moved backwards and
forwards as if one, moaning like wild beasts and
clapping their hands, the one in front setting the time

v Palestine and Syria 167
and movement, at one moment waving his sword
frantically as if cutting off all their heads, at another
crouching down and languishing. They got more
and more excited and were quite frantic when they
saw my father get out three whole shillings for them ;
then the handsome young chief himself took the lead
and joined in the dance ; he wore a dress of pink and
white-striped satin under his abbaieh, gold thread in
his kaftan, and sbver-mounted arms, and looked no
end of a fine gentleman.
The next morning we were off early and at the
Jordan soon after light, a fine rushing clear river, but
we were only allowed to stay a bare hour here, and
the Hadji with his long spear and the Bedouins kept
close to us, for they said they saw a hostile tribe lurking
amongst the trees on the other side all the while, and
that they had "loaded" guns : how could they tell that ?
But they seemed really relieved to get us away and
out of the jungle ; except for the mosquitoes it seemed a
tempting spot on a hot day, so green, with a refreshing
draught coming down the river: a large party of
Eussian pilgrims were also there, with a mad Greek
priest on an awkward mule. When we got to the
Dead Sea the Hadji told me his "ladies" always
liked to bathe, and sent me off to a quiet creek to do
likewise before the Eussians came. It was tepid, very
clear, deep enough, and felt very pleasant to the skin,
but I kept my mouth shut — my father did not, and
nearly died of it, plunging in with mouth and eyes
open ; it was painfuby nasty, and seemed to take the
skin off his throat ; however the Arabs hauled him
out, and rubbed him, and fed him, and he was none the
worse. I found no shells or interesting pebbles, clean

1 68 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
small shingle was the principal lining, but the colour
of the sea, and mountains melting quite away in the
far distance, was exquisitely delicate and lovely, all
quivering in heat bke a scene in a play seen through
many doubles of gauze.
Our drag over the bare hills above was hot work,
and Jaffa oranges are seldom more appreciated than
on that road, for the Dead Sea is, as ab the world
knows, some thirteen hundred feet below the level
of the Mediterranean, and rather a warm place, and
those great oval oranges have such thick skins that
they keep cool where nothing else does : they are so
large and juicy inside too, that one can hardly get
a whole division into one's mouth at once. I shared
mine with the merry little one-eyed Arab on the shabby
colt : poor young thing ! it was quite tired out before
we got to Mar Saba, where we found our tents already
perched on a shelf over the old convent; the monks
never come beyond their walls, and eat no meat, eggs,
or milk, only the blackest bread with vegetables, and a
little oil and honey, there is not even a spring. They
collect water in the winter to last through the
summer, and live in perpetual dread of the Bedouins
breaking in upon them, steabng their potatoes and
cutting off their heads, a playful habit they sometimes
indulge in. There was a tower outside for women
travellers to be put in, and Ida Pfeiffer is said to have
passed three days there, entering by a ladder at a
window, after which the ladder was taken away ;
she drew up her provisions by a pulley till she took
her departure, there being no door, and females being
considered dangerous if loose about the premises.
The next day took us by way of Bethlehem, of

v Palestine and Syria 1 69
which my only recobections are of cheating Jews and
beggars selling cut shells outside, and tawdry coverings
to superstitions inside ; not a vestige of the simple
manger or of the sweet humbity of the old story. The
monks had contrived to drive out all that reminded
one of it, or could put any devotional feelings into
one's mind, and the monk who took us over the so-
cabed Holy Places appeared to have himseK a complete
contempt for the whole affair. They had whitewashed
the mosaics in the old Basbica, but the situation of
Bethlehem stbl remains unchanged and is very fine,
standing on its own hill, topped with white rocks and
houses, and having fine old obves for foreground, and
the deep blue of the Dead Sea and mountains of Moab
in the far distance. We saw hollyhocks in flower
near Bethlehem, and I learned why they were named
"holy," the second half of their name being doubt
less a corruption of the German hoch or high. We
said good-bye to our Arabs here, and pleased them
much by the gKt of some English knives.
It was quite cold at night at Solomon's Wells.
My father's aneroid moved four and a half inches
between the Dead Sea level and theirs, and the next
morning we found our tents soaked with dew, quite
a new sensation after our months through the desert.
We went down underground and explored the old foun
tain-head and the reservoirs, which still supply the
city of Jerusalem with its debcious water. We took
our mid-day rest under the old ilex Abraham is said
to have bved under, and camped that night outside
Hebron, with a beautiful view from our tent doors of
the old town and its flat roofs and domes, and the
famous mosque in its centre, covering the caves or

170 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
tombs of the Patriarchs, with almond trees in full bloom
and olives around us. At dinner we drank the sweet
wine made at Hebron, which was sold to us at a
shilling a bottle by Jew boys with corkscrew ringlets
and Eussian hats ; such a set of ragamuffins, looking
starved, cunning, and discontented. We went into a
nest of their houses in the town, one dwelling open
ing on to the top of the other, very close stowage, but
with tolerably clean rooms, and roofs with flower-pots
round them, on which roofs they seemed to bve. We
talked with many of them in German. The women
as usual were handsome, but animal-looking. We
walked also round the old walls which surrounded the
cave of Machpelah, and squinted in at the gates, but
dared do no more, for the people of Hebron are
proverbiaby uncivb to strangers ; we only found one
instance of this in a huge man who followed us about
all the morning grunting like a pig, to show that we
were swine-eating beasts, till I felt quite ashamed of
my objectionable habits ; how the old Hebronite did
grunt ! He must have been brought up in a pig-stye,
he did it so naturally ! The Hadji became nervous,
and insisted on seeing us in front of him always,
and my father was aggravating, and would dart down
side streets after pipe-sticks, and reduced our master
to the state of despair of a hen who has brought up
young ducklings who insist on taking to the water.
The next night we had a positive frost, and could
hardly sleep from cold, but it was warm enough to
thaw us on our way back to Solomon's Wells, and
quite mild again when we reached our camp outside the
Damascus Gate of Jerusalem, where we took a rest, with
sufficient time to feel at home in the famous old city.

v Palestine and Syria 171
The inside of the Sepulchre Church disgusted me more
and more. One day a huge grinding organ was play
ing a quick polka on one side, while some droning chant
was going on at the other, and the beggars, both official
and amateur, drove one out of the place. The only quiet
and dignity there was in the portico, where the old
Turkish guard used to sit and sip cups of coffee and
smoke the pipe of peace. One day I met our beauti
ful Sheik in his gorgeous raiment carrying a black
lamb in his arms, and looking bke a saint out of a
picture ; I patted the lamb, and he looked tenderly
down on me and uttered the word " backsheesh." " Sich
is bfe, which likewise is the end of all things."
We went to the English Church before we left
Jerusalem to see a baby christened, and heard a long
and thoroughly unpractical sermon, while the fat
Bishop sat in his comfortable arm-chair taking
quantities of snuff to keep himself awake, and my
father envied him, and thought he might have kept
awake too K he had only not forgotten to bring his
own dear snuff-box. The Bishop was then quarrelling
with nearly everybody all round in a truly Christian
fashion, while the Marquis of Bute was in treaty for
some ground to build a rival church on.
We rode away at last, with a train of poor people
behind, who asked leave to keep near our party for
protection on their journey. We passed through one
whole vabey fibed with fig trees, and camped at the
Bobber's Fountain, whose walls had long since gone to
ruin, but the water stbl ran out at the limestone
cracks behind. The women who came to draw it
were most picturesque figures, with long white veils,
red jackets and sashes, and blue skirts. Terraces of

172 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
olives and vines covered the hill-sides around. The
old Hadji had reduced his establishment and taken
a small boy instead of a cook, doing most of that
work himself, but he always managed to ride off with
us in the morning at seven, leaving his head man to
pack up and move the tents and luggage, which we
found ready for us every evening at the end of our
journey. We rested in the middle of the day, while
they did not, but went steadily on and got in
sufficiently before us to cook the dinner and have the
tents up. He started from Jerusalem on a huge
mule with bebs, which, when he had once got off,
would never let him get on again, cumbered as he was
with his long spear, but he rode a horse the second
day, to our great relief, after which we passed through
a pretty low country with beautiful rainbow tints
over the plain and the distant hills, with the snows
of Hermon peeping over all. The land was covered
with men ploughing and sowing dourra, and women
hoeing with bracelets all the way up to their elbows,
and all their money strung together upon their heads.
A party of these women were pulling my chain and
keys about in rather a rough way once, when I
suddenly made a catch at one of their bangled arms,
— how they shrieked and ran away !
We passed no detached houses, and the few
vblages consisted of mere cubes of mud wall of the
same colour as the rocks, and often wedged in between
them ; one day we chose a spot to rest in which
was shadeless, and the Hadji made a shelter with
his spear and rug and a few stones, then after our
meal he cabed to a poor Abyssinian who was passing,
and gave him a meal too ; it is not difficult to throw

v Palestine and Syria 173
scraps to a beggar, but to get sticks and relight a
fire and make hot coffee for a poor man when resting
in the mid-day sun shows real benevolence. Our
Hadji was one of the best men I ever knew. I found
blac, hollyhocks, and yellow jasmine, and lovely white
squibs growing round us where we rested. Jacob's
Web was an imposition, but some of the springs in
the neighbourhood suited my idea of the woman of
Samaria background better, and Nablus was in a perfect
paradise of luxuriant vegetation between the two
mountains of Gerizim and Ebal. My father gave us
what he cabed a day of rest there, so we walked up one
hill in the morning and the other in the afternoon ! the
views from Ebal were the most beautiful, but Gerizim
was the most interesting. The Samaritans were
pitching their tents on it for their great festival, when
the sheep have to be killed in the manner ordered
by then- old laws, and baked in the same old holes ;
there are said to be forty families of the real Samaritans
left, but the Hadji thought there were more.
Under Gerizim the springs gushed out in enor
mous abundance, and the waters flowed west towards
Esdraelon and the sea ; above the horizontal crack from
which the springs issued all was barren rock, below was
one huge garden of greenness : pomegranates, almonds,
peaches, and apricots, all then in full flower, with
walnuts, figs, vines, and olives encircling them; the
earth on the hibs Was a dark red, and the stones gray
and yellow, the olives too were loaded with mistletoe,
for it seemed as if the olive alone were not enough for
one space of ground, but required the extra green of- its
parasite to do justice to the general luxuriance. Every
where I went the Hadji always found bunches of

174 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
sweet roses for my tent, and he gave me three whole
boxes of sweetmeats all to myself, which he cabed
my backsheesh, and which made me very popular
with ab the children who came near the camp. He
also gave me two bottles of wonderful medicine from
Mount Carmel, smelling like sweet verbena, which was
said to cure ab complaints. The population enjoyed
seeing us eat, and gave great gasps of relief if we
used our fingers instead of those dangerous forks ;
they were most gaby clad and looked like flowers
among the gray rocks. Under the huge old obve
trees near us a man came up to exhibit a goat who
stood on a bit of wood shaped bke a dice-box, with
ab his four feet together, three men slipping fresh
pieces under his feet till he stood as high as themselves,
when he jumped on their shoulders and descended to
the ground. It was a pretty scene, the men had the
hardest work, the goat only much patience.
There were large flocks of donkeys on Gerizim,
and I had a young one put into my arms, just like
a Newfoundland puppy, it was so soft and black, with
the same long hair. On leaving Nablus we went
round by Samaria, — a terraced hbl among hibs,
loaded with olives, pomegranates, and figs, and the
ground covered with the large blue iris which grows
in every London suburban garden ; it quite scented
the air. We climbed over the Crusaders' old church, in
which the Moslems still reverence the tomb of John
the Baptist, and wandered through an avenue of fine
marble pibars, of which more than a hundred are still
standing on end, and many others built into the
walls and houses ; nothing positive is known of theb'
purpose or history. We then went on and took our

v Palestine and Syria 175
rest under a huge fig tree by a lovely spring, with a
view even to the sea, Carmel in front of us, and the
weary plain of Esdraelon, over which we dragged
on, and at last reached Jenin, and the next day
Nazareth. The flowers on the plain had a great
tendency to turn yellow ; there were huge yellow
thistles, and even borage of that colour, the great
purple desert onion was there in quantities ; convol
vuluses were tangled over everything, and the last
part of the plain seemed quite a botanical garden.
Nazareth was most lovely, and we had the good
fortune to arrive on the eve of a jereed or tournament
(the original of our polo) : the wbd horsemen
cobected from far and near to perform on the flat
fibed-up lake close to our camp, all the walls and
Mary's Fountain too being filled with spectators in
the gayest colours, whbe about fifty brilliant riders
rushed after one another on clever little Arab horses,
— a strange mixture of old and young, but ab as
eager in the sport as their masters they triumphantly
flourished their long manes and tails. In the back
ground were gray rocks and walls festooned with
masses of cactus hanging over and topping them, bright
pomegranate and fig trees, and the quaint old town
with its minaret and two tall cypress trees and the
hibs beyond.
Some nice boys were sitting behind me watching
my sketch, one of them knew a little Engbsh, and he
pulled up his sleeve and showed me an elaborate
illumination tattooed on his arm, representing the
Nativity and St. George and the Dragon, offering to
let me copy it into my book !
Nazareth was a very tempting place to linger at,

176 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
so bright, and the air. so healthy ; the old chapels of
the Annunciation were the most picturesque bubdings
I had seen in Palestine, gems of bght and shade, and
rich warm colouring, with no modern tawdriness to spob
them, and the Greek one contained some really beautiful
carving. The Nazarene women had graceful figures, but
I saw no Madonna-like faces. They carry an enormous
weight of silver ornaments and coins about with
them, and have a way of balancing the water jars
over theb* heads, not on them, with their hands, which
is very elegant.
We saw a beetle's funeral during our day's ride
towards Cana, one beetle about the size of a thimble
was robing over and over a round ball of dung about
the size of a bibiard ball, with a dead beetle sticking
to it as large as the other ; at last we stopped it,
and after a few vain rushes the undertaker flew away.
I wonder if he returned after we left to finish the
work, or if he brought friends to help him ? The
cactuses about Cana of Galilee were loaded with
flowers, thirty on one flattened stalk, the pomegranates
were also in full flower, with a yebow -coloured con
volvulus running over them. Our tents at Tiberias
were pitched at the very edge of the lake, and my
father wished to "let down his net for a draught,"
in other words to see the fish, so we stayed a whole
day. An Englishman who had lately been there had
accidentally shot a boatman, and I felt most thankful
my father carried nothing that might "go off"
accidentally, our only arm was the dear old Hadji's
spear, which was generally much in his way, but he
said the Arabs took him for a soldier when they
saw it, and gave him a wide berth. He also had a

v Palestine and Syria 177
little fable of the shepherd boys taking him for an
Arab, and cabing their flocks together when they
saw him in the distance ; the old fellow really believed
in his spear and its power of striking terror, and
that was a comfort to him. Our day of rest at
Tiberias was a fatiguing one, the air there was so heavy ;
about two o'clock a terrible thunderstorm, with wind
and dust, came on, the lake became covered with
waves, and the palms bent till they nearly broke,
but in ten minutes more it was over, and Hermon was
visible again. It is an extremely picturesque place,
the old Turkish wab and towers being thrown out
of their perpendicular by earthquakes, but we saw
none of the vegetation we expected, all was burnt
up and yellow, and the Jews were a most wretched-
looking race, who ate locusts and even worms, we
were told. My father saw none of the fish he was so
anxious about, there was only one boat, and that was
on the other side just then ; the old fisherman we
saw at work merely walked into the shallow water
and threw in a handnet and then pubed it out again
and got — nothing ! I took a bath in the same place,
walking into the sea straight out of my tent door
in my mackintosh cloak, and 'after a good wash
walked back dripping, and enjoyed it much ; an hour's
hanging in the sun making my cloak as dry as ever
again. We went along the shore to the old Eoman hot
baths, taking our towels with us, but found no room,
such a motley crowd was there ; a jolly old nun was
in a great rage, she had ordered her bath days before,
and found two men in it, but the bath director assured
her they were out of the tub now, and it was none
N

178 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the worse! However, the old lady had the same
ideas we have on the subject of fresh water, and told
me it had probably been full of a succession of
people since the morning. My father found it so
hot at the spring head that he could not hold his
finger in it, and it was as nasty to taste as the water
of the Dead Sea. I went for a few moments into the
ladies' waiting-room, and saw a dance going on like the
" round and round the mulberry bush " of my childhood.
I found a Spanish Jewess to talk to, and then went
home with my old groom, leaving my father to persist
till he got his bath ; the old groom took always especial
care of me, keeping strangers from coming near my
tent, and popping in his head at odd hours to nod
and see I wanted nothing, he hardly ever spoke, but
sat and darned saddle cloths whenever we rested,
keeping his needles and thread always in his turban.
The last day of April found us riding slowly up
the steep slopes of the lake of Gennesaret, we would
gladly have lingered amongst the snaky swamps of
the holy lake, to feast our eyes on its blueness and
fringes of pink-flowering oleander, and to speculate
on the lost sites of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and
Chorazin, but two days of stewing at Tiberias had
taught us that it would be wiser to move upwards,
and now as we mounted we gradually felt the full
luxury of being able to breathe again. Our spirits
rose in proportion, and on reaching the heights of
Safed the amount of fresh air became quite intoxica
ting, our old Hadji gave a great " hoot ! " tossed his
long spear in the air, and striking the sharp edges of
his shovel stirrups into his poor little horse, converted
it instantly into an Arab steed, and disappeared into

v Palestine and Syria 1 79
the town like the wind, leaving us as legacy a
cloud of dust. It was too bad, but how could we
be angry, for had not the Hadji a friend in that town
whom he loved as a brother ? And we were breathing
the purest air and perhaps seeing one of the most
glorious views in the whole world. We sat on rich
carpets of grass and flowers, and our horses ate
beside us, seeming also to enjoy looking across that
sapphire lake to the hbls " beyond Jordan," and again
on the other side to Samaria and Mount Tabor ; we
opened our mouths as web as our eyes to take in as
much as possible of the cool fresh breeze, like the
poor flies who survive after being shut up by school
boys in tin boxes half-fub of lucifer matches.
At last our old friend returned, minus his spear,
and accompanied by his friends and by the train of
inevitable idlers who, ab the world over, welcome
strangers to provincial towns, and at Safed there is
perhaps more idleness than at most places, for is it
not extraordinarby holy ? In a quarter of an hour
our horses had scrambled over the strangely-paved
lanes of the city and reached our tents, which were
pitched under the grand old olives at the foot of the
Castle Hbl, and now I must record the only unpleasant
. adventure that ever met my wanderings in any land,
but the ludicrous part of the affair was so much
greater than the disagreeable that I would now hardly
have missed it.
The glorious air of this hill country had taken all
idea of fatigue from me, and as it was still early in
the afternoon I thought I would try to get a sketch of
the famous view from the castle before sunset without
disturbing my father, so I strolled on alone through

180 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the vineyards up the hbl-side, passing only one old goat
herd with his flock at the foot of the slope, and entered
the old fortress by a gap in the wall ; it was a large
enclosure, with the keep standing high in the middle.
I had just reached the foot of this when three rough
creatures suddenly appeared dancing round me and
yelling, at last one of them tried to catch hold of my
arm, and would have stopped my way, but that was too
much for a freeborn British woman to put up with, so
I picked up a great stone, nearly as big as my head,
and told him in good Engbsh to " be off." I did not
swear, that would have been unladylike, but the words
were effective, for all three men ran off as hard as they
could, and I walked on with awful dignity up the
mound, and then sat down and pretended to sketch.
I tried to look as if I did not mind it, but somehow the
pencil would not go straight, and thinking discretion
the better part of valour I just turned and came back
again, stbl carrying my big stone, and marking well
the gap in the wall by which I had entered and by
which I hoped to make my retreat, but was horror-
struck at seeing my three enemies come galloping up
upon the bare back of a strong gray mare in the moat
just between me and the gap. To this day I hardly
know how I managed to get past them and reach the
top first, perhaps the mare shied as they were sbpping
off her back, I know I shook my stone at them and
gave them some more English before running most
ignominiously down the hill, in company with a shower
of stones from their hands. I never slackened speed
till I came within reach of the deaf old goatherd, who
looked up and said " Mashabah ! " most benevolently,
for was he not going to acquire much backsheesh by

v Palestine and Syria 1 8 1
supplying our camp with mbk that night and the
next morning ?
The Hadji was holding a high levie in his tent,
friends and admirers were covering every inch of his
carpets, and pipes and coffee were being slowly con
sumed, while the good old man was tebing his famous
stories about his grandfather and Mecca, but at the
sight of me and the stone he was up in an instant, and
before I had had jtime to say many words he shouted
" Abdul, July, Achmet, Abate, Isa, my whip, my gun ! "
and was off up the hbl in no time followed by his no
less energetic suite. (N.B. — Our old friend did not take
his long spear with him this time, though it was
generally supposed to be such a terror to evildoers !)
A prisoner was soon brought down, and I was obliged
to recognise him as one of the culprits, and afterwards
began, as many witnesses doubtless have done before me,
to doubt if he really was one of them after all. No
feebng can be more wretched than this sort of doubt,
and I begged he might be let off, but was snubbed for
my pains, and he was marched off to prison. Then
the stone was carefully done up in white paper, and
sealed both with the Hadji's signet ring and with my
own name of " Pop," and we were told that as we were
to leave the place next morning the stone might be
required as a witness, and might possibly be sent to
attend the trial at Constantinople ! The culprits were
ab bad characters, and the " Government " would bke
an excuse to be quit of them. The Government
(consisting of a black corporal and two subs) spent
the evening in the Hadji's tent, and I strongly suspect
some of the prisoners' relations with long purses were
also there, for about nine o'clock the whole party

182 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
came before us, and we were asked K we would bke
to see the culprits have 250 lashes of the bastinado
at sunrise the next morning, or would we prefer letting
them go ? We always bked seeing the customs of the
countries we happened to be in, but did not fancy
this one, especiaby before breakfast, so we had our
hands kissed instead, after which the authorities
kicked and cuffed the wrong men out of the camp,
then returned, and the Hadji gravely broke the
seals of the mysterious packet containing the stone,
asked me if I had any further occasion for it, and
handed it to the corporal, who handed it to his sub,
who tossed it down the hill, and after shaking hands
all round the ceremony ended.
Before we left the country we heard that the worst
of my enemies had been sent off for a soldier, that the
whole family was bad, and one of them had been so
very wicked and murdered so many people that the Jews
at last subscribed together to pay a man to kib him,
and this fellow went up to him one night, pretending
to be his friend, and kissed him, and while he did it
he also stuck a knKe into his body, so that he died ;
this story shows how bttle customs have altered since
the beginning of our era.
But I have said enough of this last day of Aprb
1866. The new month began with glorious sunshine,
and the Hadji came up with his coffee-cup in his
hand, and said, " Now you give me two more days and
I show you what no one else has seen, something you
can talk about in England," for the good man had
been in our country, and knew well our weaknesses.
This great thing that no one else had seen was the
Jewish festival at Meiron, which takes place on the

v Palestine and Syria 1 83
three first days of May in every year ; probably most
people know that Safed is regarded by the Jews with
even greater veneration than Jerusalem itself, and
they confidently expect their coming Messiah to rise
from the Sea of Gablee and to establish His kingdom
at Safed. This kingdom is to be very rich, and the
people would wish to be on the spot when the event
happens ; so old Jews and Jewesses crawl hither from
all parts of the world, to end their days in their " own
land," and will undergo the greatest privations for the
sake of dying near these holy places and holy men,
for in and about Safed many of their greatest and most
learned Eabbis have been buried. But perhaps of all
these none are so much revered as Hillel, Shammai,
and Ben Tochai, and it was to their tombs on the bare
hbl-side at Meiron that we (as web as nearly every
man, woman, or child in Safed) were going on that
fine May morning.
But first the commissariat was attended to, for
there were no shops on the stony hibs of Galbee, so
we fobowed the Hadji and his boy through the
markets and shabby old bazaars, and were afterwards
taken to see the synagogues. The bubdings them
selves were poor as their occupants, but these latter
were well worth studying. They sat in long rows,
and were mostly very old, many of them the very
oldest men I have ever seen anywhere, with long
white beards, and heavy silver phylacteries bound
on their poor old foreheads ; they kept incessantly
wagging theb- heads and bodies, like the polar bear
in the Zoological Gardens, and jabbering each his own
particular psalm from the parchment roll before him.
They were apparently in earnest, and though they

184 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
followed us with their eyes as we walked round
amongst them, their bodies never ceased to wag, and
their hearts were far from us. They do little else but
this, these poor Jews of Safed, and expect God to do
ab for them whbe they sit and talk of what they
would do for God ; to " praise Him with body and
bones " is somewhere in their Bible, and therefore they
keep (like Chinese idols) in perpetual motion. When
sickness visits them, which is a rare occurrence in that
healthy locality, they pray to Jeremiah or to some
other of their prophets, and if the patient does not
die he is cured ; for doctors are unknown there. But
in spite of all this old-world faith we had great
demands made on our small stock of medicines whilst
amongst the people.
On our return to our canvas home we found all
our party were taking advantage of being near a large
town to undergo the luxury of being shaved, and Carl
Haag might have painted a good picture of the gay
barber with his rich Damascus kaftan and sash, and
his thickly-embroidered jacket and hanging sleeves ;
he was (as all Figaros are) infinitely amusing, and his
gossip kept all around laughing, whbe he whitened all
their heads in turn, the noble old olives above and
the bundles of carpets and saddle-cloths around com
pleting the highly-coloured scene, which was backed
by the blue hills of Galilee.
The sun was yet high when we arrived at Meiron,
and secured the only bit of level ground on that stony
hill on which to pitch our tents. The Christian
inhabitants of a few huts near were employed in
making arbours or tabernacles of myrtle boughs in and
around the tombs, to protect the expected guests from

\

v Palestine and Syria 185
the mid-day sun and the dews of night, for the bubd
ing which covered the tombs was not half large enough
to take in all those that came to the festival. There
were many families too poor to pay the large sums
demanded by the Eabbis for its miserable cells. It is
curious that these famous Jewish tombs are (except in
this month of May) left entirely in the charge of the
poor Christian people of the place, and on these people
the whole Jewish assembly depended for a supply of
water, mibc, and ice (from Hermon), the only luxury
we saw sold on the premises, though some very
suspicious looking black bottles were constantly
appearing in the crowd (with telling effect afterwards).
We spent the whole of the afternoon most profitably
in watching the endless procession of extraordinary
figures arriving up the hill, and as each party came up
they took possession of the snuggest hole or corner they
could find, under rocks or in the tombs ; there seemed
no more space left, and yet they continued to pour in
•all night and all the next day — a perfect Babel. There
were Jews of all countries, men, women, and chbdren,
from Eussia, Spain, Hungary, Poland, and Italy, as
well as from Alexandria, Smyrna, and Damascus, not
forgetting one poor woman from Liverpool, to whom I
owe much kindness. She was married to the son of
the chief Eabbi of Safed, and said she had a good
husband, and nothing to complain of beyond extreme
dulness, and a longing after her own dear country,
where men worked as web as played. It was a rare
treat for her to talk to a countrywoman, and I promised
if ever I went to her native town to tell her brothers
I had seen her, with her eyelids blacked, as she said
" You should do in Turkey as the Turkeys do ! " A

1 86 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
great deal was thought of that hideous ornamentation,
and a young Hungarian Jewess, who was also the wife
of an Arab Jew, told her nothing should ever induce
her to give way to such a barbarous custom. I think
Esther was wiser to conform. The Hungarian had
all the national love of braid and milbnery, and told
me that her husband, who was rich, offered to give her
a box of ab the newest fashions direct from Vienna
every month if she liked, " but what satisfaction could
she have in dressing web there among such a set ! " she
said, waving her hand over the crowd below us.
We were sitting on some high rocks then, and
could see the whole track of pilgrims as far as Safed,
and farther to the right the Lake of Tiberias. About
sunset the Ark was danced up the hill, and it was
esteemed the greatest honour to bear i,ts heavy weight.
This Ark is a large cylinder of highly-embossed sbver,
and in it are kept the old books of the law, so that
it was quite as much as one man could possibly do to
carry it and dance at the same time up a steep path.
The permission for this is sold by the Eabbi at
auction, the money of course going to the common
fund. A rich Jew of Alexandria also bought the
privbege of dancing before it (like David) with a
green flag in his hand, his very elaborate jumps looking
far more incongruous from his being in the ordinary
costume of a Frank gentleman. A host of other men
danced round the Ark, clapping their hands and singing
a wbd chant, with some such words as, " God is here,
He is on His holy hill, His house is on the mountains,
it is very good that we are with Him and with His holy
men, may they rest in peace, etc., etc." They got more
and more frantic in their song and dance till at last

v Palestine and Syria 187
the Ark reached its resting-place, and then they com
menced eating and drinking and gambling, and so
passed the night, while the poor women and children
crept into their several holes and corners, with
carpets and quilts, and converted themselves into live
bundles. The next day the excitement continued to
increase, as the ,crowd constantly became thicker, and
the dancing, singing, praying, gossiping, fighting and
drinking were incessant. Pistols and guns were
continually being let off, yet we only heard of one
man actuaby killed. Our friend the black corporal
appeared on the scene and kept as good order as any
English policeman could have done, his only weapon
being a strong whip of rhinoceros hide, but the rows
were incessant, and the " Government " had no sinecure.
The Turkish Governor of Safed also graced the
festival with his presence, and my father invited him
to coffee and pipes in his tent ; it was a fine sight to
see the two disputing the order of precedence over the
rocks and stones which led to our front door. My
father waved his old wide-awake, and the old Turk
his long pipe, but when at last we had seated our
guest in an arm-chair we got on very well, for he had,
like many first-class Turks, all the manners of a
gentleman. He examined our sketches, and though
he held most of them upside-down his compliments
were without stint, and given with that air of sincerity
which can never fail to be gratifying. The portrait
of the corporal particularly took his fancy, and I
believe he would have sat for his own had I had the
courage to ask him, for Turks seldom have the same
horror of a woman drawing them that they have if a
man does it : a man, they say, in drawing their face

1 88 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
obtains the mastership over their soul, while a woman,
having no soul of her own, has no power to interfere
with those of others.
The old Governor's high turban, long beard, and
gray fur cloak were tempting bits for an artist, but I
remembered that silence is golden and said nothing. Our
Hadji afterwards invited him and all the other officials
to a dinner in his own tent, and I was permitted to
peep through a hole and see the great people eat, ab
sitting in the usual fashion cross-legged round a
" mountain of rice " and other Moslem delicacies, my
dear old father trying to look as if he had not got
the cramp, and receiving choice morsels tossed into
his mouth by the hands of his friends, with a smiling
countenance. This hospitality was a wise move on
the part of our master the Hadji, for it secured us
every possible attention, and all facilities for seeing
the great show of the evening. When it was quite
dark we put on our thick cloaks and entered the
building, following our guide through the dense crowd
and up into the galleries, which were crowded with
women and children. After a while the Hadji made
us mount a six-feet wall on to the roof, which was
also crowded with people, a young giant being pro
vided by our old and thoughtful friend to make his
back into a step by which we mounted, and from
whence we were hauled up by those above. The roof
was covered with small round domes, and there was
only about a foot of flat surface between them and the
edge of the building, which stood on a precipice of
some hundred feet, — a nice prospect in case of a slip.
The darkness helped to hide our dangers, and we crept
behind the domes till we found space reserved for us

v Palestine and Syria 1 89
between two of them, where we could sit or stand and
look down into the court of the building and its
crowd of Jews. It was a most strange scene, and
needed the hand of a Eembrandt to paint it properly.
On a raised platform at the end of the court stood
an altar shaped like a font, into this strange figures
were flinging shawls off their heads and shoulders,
sashes and dresses all heavy with gold and silver
embroidery ; others threw in bracelets, necklaces, and
the gold coins off their heads ; oil was poured on the
mass, and the whole lit up into a blaze of light, the
only bght in the whole wild scene. Below, the men
were still dancing frantically to the music of their
own monotonous chanting, accompanied by pipes and
tabor (I saw nothing like a harp). All the galleries
and roofs were crowded with spectators in every
imaginable costume, in the far distance we saw the
town of Safed marked by a thousand lights, and
seeming to hang up amongst the stars like some new
constebation ; it was a wonder any one was left to
ibuminate it, for ab the people seemed to be with us,
probably some Christians were paid to stay there.
The cold sent us home after a couple of hours of this
wonderful play, and our big giant took us in his
hands and lifted us down as easily as if we were dobs.
Few of the Jews slept that night, they walked about
the hbls from tomb to tomb, visiting also the old
ruined synagogues, many of which still remain
amongst the rocks — singing and wailing and swing
ing their torches in a way which prevented all other
visitors at Meiron from sleeping likewise.
The next morning the chief Eabbi took possession
of the mass of precious metal remaining in the font,

190 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
which was to be distributed, according to annual
custom, amongst the poor Jews of Safed ; on this they
exist (I will not say live) tbl May comes again. Many
large sums were also sent by persons unable to attend
the festival in person ; one Egyptian Jew sent a note
for £500, so that it is easy to believe what vast sums are
often collected on these occasions. The rite of circum
cision was to be celebrated on the third day, and as we
left we saw processions of little boys dressed up like idols
and riding on gaily-dressed horses or on their father's
shoulders or heads, making the round of the tombs
accompanied by drums and pipes. I had made a good
many friends among the Jewesses, some of whom were
very beautiful, and their dresses most picturesque,
their figures perfect, though they showed rather more
of them than we do (even among fashionable ladies),
but the amount of positive beauty was greater on that,
hbl of Meiron than I have ever seen in Her Majesty's
Drawing-room. How such women could belong to such
men is always to me a wonder. The men seemed to be
made after nature's lowest type, and until they become
very old are not even picturesque, there is something
almost repugnant about the ordinary Jew of Palestine,
with his bloodless face and corkscrew ringlets. Porter
gives a most true description of them, " They look as if
they had been unexpectedly turned out of a hospital
before their cure was completed, and had clothed
themselves in the first rags they could pick up."
Our next day's ride was a pleasant contrast after
the Babel of the Jews' Hill ; we still kept on high
ground, lingering a whbe at the ruins of Kadesh
Naphtali, at a lovely spot whose springs had attracted
a wandering tribe of Arabs with some thousand goats

v Palestine and Syria 191
and sheep. Hermon rose grandly in the background
from the great plain of Jordan, it has a noble outline,
with its perpetual snows. We saw it constantly as we
crept along the forest-covered ridge opposite, and on
the other side we saw even to the coasts of Tyre and
Sidon, or again in another direction to the snows of
Lebanon. The green of the young oak-shoots was
greener than any green in England, and the ground
was covered by a constantly changing variety of
flowers and shrubs, — the wild almond with its sweet
blossoms, the bay, myrtle, lbac and white cistus, pink
and white cyclamen, yellow broom, campanulas, and
anemones of ab sorts grew there, while honeysuckles
and clematis climbed to the tops of the trees.
We came to a vibage where a wedding was being
celebrated, and a half circle of young men had bnked
their arms together and were dancing most gracefully
round one who was playing the pipes ; the parson of the
parish (I believe), stripped naked to the waist, was
also dancing about and thumping his chest as a drum,
after the fashion of a goriba. All the girls from a
neighbouring vblage had come to pay their respects to
the bride, and, of course, had made themselves as
smart as possible ; they all walked, and the one man
who attended them rode on horseback — such are the
manners of Syrians i After all these fresh mountain
scenes we descended with regret into the stifling plain
of Huleh, and added to our discomfort by losing our
way and wandering hopelessly through all the hottest
hours of the day among its great black boulder
stones, trying to find the one ford of the Jordan. No
live thing was to be seen far or near for a weary
space of time, at last we all three shouted simul-

192 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
taneously as one of the black stones seemed to move,
then another, till at last they turned into a flock of
sheep and goats winding up out of the trough through
which the river ran, and close to the very ford we
were in search of.
How good that water was ! Only those who
have passed such a day can feel fully the luxury of
a drink of pure water, but we were hurried past its
hedges of blushing oleander, for our Hadji cared not
to see too much of the wild shepherds who were
collected on its banks, and before sunset we were in
our own tents at Banias, the Paradise of Syrians, and
close to one of the chief sources of their holy river.
The springs gushed out from under high cliffs amidst
a tangle of vegetation greener than green, from the
green frogs and maiden-hair ferns under the stones to
the high Italian poplars, which were themselves again
loaded with climbing plants. I shall never forget
the lazy enjoyment of sitting as I did till nearly
dark on an isolated stone, and every now and then
sucking up the bving water through a reed without
having the trouble even of stooping to dip my hand
in. Eoman inscriptions and Crusaders' castles were
all described by Murray, why should I trouble
myself about them ? fresh water, rest, and the sense of
surrounding lovebness were all I cared for in Banias,
ab seemed peace there. And yet a terrible war had
already begun on this enchanting greenness, — the locusts
were swarming over the cornfields up to the very
tops of the high oak trees, in a few weeks all would
be barren, while the indolent Turks were sitting on
their heels saying, Allah ! Mashabah ! When we
left we saw trees we had passed and admired on

v Palestine and Syria 193
coming in, black with locusts, we trampled on them
by millions, and they would soon be too old to sweep
and destroy.
We made our way slowly round Mount Hermon,
diverging here and there to search out the old temples
of Baal nestbng in niches of the great mountain, — and
over spurs of it as high as Snowdon, to Hasbeiya
and Eusheiya, where we found the Maronite women
cobecting the young locusts in sacks to burn, which
raised our opinion of Eastern Christians. It was
glorious riding along those hill terraces over the vines
and under the snows. One morning I had enough
orange blossom given me to dress a royal breakfast
table, and to make a fortune at Covent Garden; I
stuck it ab over my horse, and when we met a party
of country people, one of them pointed me out to the
others, " Look at her who was born in a garden," and
another fobowed me to give me a handful of poppies,
not quite so sweet, but very lovely, with white edgings
and black centres to their scarlet petals. The
Maronite women I thought an impudent set, and
they begged incessantly. The Druses were much more
agreeable companions, and they brought us really
clean good butter and thin bread, bke Scotch oat-cake,
at Eakhleh, where we passed some hours among some
very curious old temples.
Ab these temples face the mountain, on the top
of which was once the chief home of Baal ; there was
one great stone face at Eakhleh, seven feet across, with
a wreath of flowers carved round it, and a few large
oaks and walnuts, showing what the country had once
been ; now there is little growing amongst the stones
save herbs and giant lavender; though I found one
0

194 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
exquisite iris, with the three hanging petals debcately
pencbled in half-mourning tints, with a red purple
centre and the upper petals light blue. When at last
we got on to the great Damascus road, both the Hadji
and his old groom grumbled, and went stumbling on
along the old path in preference to the smooth way
which our horses went so merrily over, and we soon
found ourselves again in Dimitri's pretty house.
Though Cairo had been possibly more picturesque,
we still found Damascus more Arabian Nights like
than any other city, and the people less spoiled by
contact with Franks than in Egypt.
When my father wanted money, there being no
correspondent of Coutts there then, the Hadji took us to
a dervish who kept an ironmonger's shop ; he cashed
a cheque without being able to read or understand a
word that was written on it, or having any previous
knowledge of our character, and then asked us to sit
down, and sent out for ices for us to eat. On my
admiring his turban and asking where it might be
bought, he descended from his counter, hung up his
net, and guided us himself through a mbe or so of
bazaar to the place where he got his own, and stayed
to see we were not cheated about the price. The
" word of an Englishman " was never doubted in those
days at Damascus ; we found the S.'s there, and the
lady had had a fever, caught by her mule tumbling
through a broken bridge and into a river on her
ride from Beyroot, and half drowning her. They
seemed to have taken injudiciously long stages, such
as our Hadji would never have allowed ; three weeks
the good lady had been ill, but most kindly looked
after by our Consul, Mr. Eogers, and his sister, and

v Palestine and Syria 195
the Pasha's own Hungarian doctor, who refused all
payment. Miss Eogers was a very remarkable little
woman, she had lost her hearing through illness when
quite a young girl ; but her energy and cleverness
more than replaced the one sense she had lost, and
she had made herself mistress of Arabic and of many
Eastern languages, and used to go among the harems,
making real friends of some of the ladies there. She
also drew with great delicacy all the most intricate
Oriental ornaments and designs, and had written
much on the subject ; I do not think that she ever
knew what an idle hour was.
The Arabs describe their favourite city as " a
pearl of great price sunk in the midst of a living
emerald, and set in a ring of purest gold of endless
magnitude," they might also have added a good
sprinkling of amethysts to the edge of the setting,
for we saw far off hills of that colour as we took
our last look before following the grandfather of the
emerald, the green -edged Abana, to its very source,
sometimes along its fruitful meadows and groves,
sometimes high above them on the salmon-coloured
stony hills, over which again the stormy clouds echoed
the same salmon tints : sometimes, too, we went through
gorges as wild as any Swiss passes. We camped at
the fountains of Ain Fijeh, where there was a consider
able rush of water from the cave, but so choked with
thick trees that we could scarcely see the temple at
its head : further on at the narrowest part of the
gorge a Eoman single-arched bridge crossed the river,
marking the site of ancient Abba.
It became very cold, and we had to walk to keep
ourselves warm, and before we expected it, found

196 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
ourselves on the top of a ridge, with Baalbek just at
our feet, in the great plain which divides the two
mountain ranges of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon. Three
days we passed amongst the ruins, how gigantic they
were ! the six columns of the Sun at Baalbek dwarf
the Jupiter Temple at Athens, and even Egypt shows
no squared stones larger than those in its foundation
wall. The elaboration of its friezes and doorways
rivals in detail the Greek lace of a later period : the
great entrance of the Temple of Jupiter is perhaps the
finest example of this extreme ornamentation, and
some giant earthquake with a mania for " cobecting "
seems once to have made a great grab at its keystone,
but found it too strong for him, so left it hanging
most uncomfortably, as it does to this day, — a fit
guibotine for Goliath.
It is not only these many superb ruins which
render Baalbek superior to most other spots in the
world, but also its situation on the rich plain, striped
with green crops and mulberry-coloured earth, watered
with endless springs and surrounded by the noble
hills from Lebanon to Hermon. The barbarians were
still doing their best to spoil the place by taking
away loads of stone for house-building in the town,
and excavating the pillars to get at their iron clamps.
They had lately discovered a fine headless statue, and
I have little doubt more might be found by judicious
digging. It was very cold at night, and it required
some practice to arrange one's bundle of clothes so
as to keep from freezing in one's tent; I had just
succeeded in getting to sleep on the third night when
I felt the tent pole shaking violently, and all the
mustard, pepper, salt, and water bottles on the table

v Palestine and Syria igy
were falling over one another and on me. I jumped
up and looked out, and saw something dark rubbing
itself against my tent, but was too cold to do more
than say " Go away, beast," and fasten myself up
again. The invisible enemy continued its unquiet
movements, braying and groaning at intervals, till
in the morning we found the tent torn away from
the pole in the most ragged state, and a donkey
gone ! The Hadji, after hunting everywhere in vain,
appbed to the " Government," and we went off in low
spirits, never expecting to see that ass again, I blaming
myseK for not having given an alarm ; but at the foot
of the hbls we were overtaken by a wild man on a
colt, who turned out to be a pobceman, and who was
fobowed by some others, driving before them the lost
donkey ! It had been stolen, and the stealer was in
prison, so we gave the captors some backsheesh, and
bhe thief would probably give more backsheesh to be
let off, and in the end the " Government " would make
a good thing of it.
We passed the famous pillar in the middle of the
plain which, fables say, was carried there on a woman's
back ab the way from Baalbek, and we saw a curious
mirage in the distance, looking like an arm of the sea,
with islands running up to within a mile of us ; the
foreground was brilliant with red poppies. At the
place where we rested a little way up the hill, an old
Christian woman, with a pint pot tied on the back of
her head by way of a head-dress, and the rest of her
body done up in rags except where it was not done
up at ab, was very hospitable, and sheltered us from
the wind, which almost blew us off our horses. At
Ain Ata, where we slept, the cold was fearful, and the

198 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
vblage and convent had been burnt down a few weeks
before by the Turks on the bare supposition that the
inhabitants, who were Christians, might possibly have
given shelter to their outlawed chief Jusef Carram.
The poor half-starved priest, whom we asked to dine
with us, in his melon-shaped hat, told us too many
stories of that wild hero's exploits to let us believe he
would be thus caught like a weasel asleep.
The sun was barely up when we reached the
summit of Lebanon the next morning, and the sleet
and wind which had persecuted us while ascending soon
ceased, so that we could gather a lovely little mountain
nosegay of dwarf flowers, hyacinths, crocuses, tulips,
and snowdrops, which with other Alpine flowers were
peeping out from the thin edges of the snowdrifts,
while lower down we found sweet-scented cyclamen,
forget-me-not, grape hyacinth, and every variety of
sweet violet. Our little horses thought us the slowest
of travellers, but the herbs were so very good to eat that
they forgave us, and fobowed bke dogs zigzag among
the bushes and stones, and it was noonday before we
reached our resting-place under the oldest historical
trees in the world. Could we have found a more
imposing and magnificent church to spend Whitsunday
in than under those Cedars of Lebanon ? We never
would give a penny towards bubding or repairing the
paltry Greek chapel there, for no work of human hands
ought to spob that place.
The trees stand alone, a compact little group on the
mountain, with not perhaps half-a-dozen stragglers, and
no other patches of this species exist in the district ;
there are about 300 trees altogether, but only twelve
of the very large ones, which exceed in size any in

v Palestine and Syria 1 99
Europe.1 We stayed two nights among those giant
trunks, and at night the Hadji roasted a sheep and
treated all the wandering shepherds to a good meal,
making my father come and gossip too over his pipe
by the fire, and all these wild figures in the yellow
glare, backed by the dark old trees, with the white
moon shining through their interlaced branches, made
another of those pictures which never fade from my
memory, but serve to brighten odd hours on long
journeys or sleepless nights. I often wish I could
lend such treasures of recobection to some of my stay-
at-home friends, who complain of dub hours and
ennui. At Eden we could not stop, for the unburned
remnants of that lovely place were full of soldiers, also
looking out for "the Carram." The Hadji had been
at Eden before with the Prince and Dr. Stanley, when
they had lodged in the beautiful palace ; this same
Jusef was then a prisoner at Constantinople, and his
old mother had begged the Prince to get him set free,
which he did, and now he was again in trouble — the
palace burned, and our master was not inclined to recall
this incident to the recollections of the soldiers. So
we passed on through its figs and vines, and proceeded
down, down, down, across torrents and watercourses^
tbl we came to obves again, and hedges of white roses
looking in the distance bke snowdrifts, and amid
pomegranates, apricots, clematis, and jasmine, to orange,
lemon, and citron trees, and at last to Tripoli.
We stopped short of the town and camped on the
brow of a cliff overhanging it, on ground which was
1 There is an isolated grove of these same cedars in the mountains
of Cyprus.— 0. D. Cobham. %

200 Recollections of a Happy Life chap,
called the " Dog's Garden," for a good merchant (peace
be with his bones), knowing how necessary scavenger
dogs were to the health of his native place, left this
piece of land to be farmed ever afterwards for the
sole benefit of the dogs of Tripoli; the olives were
sold for their advantage, the corn was made into bread
for them, and when they died they were buried at
the foot of their own trees, and thus profited their
descendants. During the two days that we rested
there a dog always lay at my tent door, doubtless
deputed by his febows to see that the rites of hospi
tality were duly observed, and also to levy a lawful
tax on such bones as might be despised by the human
infidels; when we left a liberal backsheesh was deposited
by the Hadji towards the dogs' fund. The town and
luxuriant delta at Tripoli had the . character of being
extremely unhealthy, but that did not apply to our
canine perch on the cliff, whence we looked down on
all that low land as on a map, and over a wide range
of blue sea from Beyroot to Latakia.
As the first travebers of the season we were
looked on with some suspicion, — might perhaps be
hiding Jusef Carram himseK, who could say ? And
why had we not camped in the swamps of the burying-
ground, like other strangers ? The Governor himself
called on his way to a locust hunt, and catechised the
Hadji, the end of which was that we were forced,
nolens volens, to accept a guard of honour. A very
good-looking corporal and two men, all dressed in
white cabco, tied up their horses to our trees that same
afternoon, debvered the Governor's compliments, and
shouldered their muskets before our tents, and if they
had not been over-tempted by the smell of the Hadji's

v Palestine and Syria 201
supper, would doubtless have marched up and down
close to us till they saw our backsheesh and departure
next morning. This same Governor of Tripoli was a
man of spirit, he had ordered a fine of 100 piastres
to be paid by every man who neglected to bring him
in three okas (about 6^ lbs.) of locusts, which pests, at
the time we were there, were all under the size of an
English blackbeetle, and the children were out filling
goat-skins with them in every direction ; it would be
well if Syria had more such governors.
The ride along the coast was most lovely, nearly
always close to the sea, on a road that was once
paved by Sesostris (Murray says), and has never been
mended since ; we avoided it as much as we could,
and the first night slept close to the water's edge, and
I walked in dressed in my mackintosh, as I did at
Tiberias, and had a most enjoyable bath on the smooth
golden sand. Near us was a khan with a cistern for
rain water on its roof, up to which the animals were
led by a steep side-walk to drink, there being no other
fresh water in the place.
There were few plants but myrtle then in full
bloom. We rested at a most gossipy cafe" near Jebeb,
where the Hadji filled a pipe and spread a carpet
under a plane tree, and told us to be good for a
couple of hours, as he had business in the town near :
no doubt a small tobacco speculation, for that is the
most famous place in all Syria for a particular sort
much valued for filling narghiles. We were well
content to sit there and to look at the deep blue sea
and the strange people passing. First there came a
priest on a donkey, with his servant, and he got off
and sat down for a gossip, and exchanged tobacco with

202 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.-
my father. Then came a great man with three wild
attendents, who did bkewise ; then muleteers with
donkeys bearing pots of oil; and lastly the most
beautiful man I ever saw, a wild Greek monk from
the mountains, with a black hood and gown ; his head,
when calm or pleased, would have been a model for
Christ, but when savage it became like Mephistopheles !
They catechised us about Carram as usual, and when
our leader returned had a most animated political
talk, but this monk talked down all the rest by his
eloquence. I think, like poor Juban Young, he enjoyed
society more than clerical work.- The other priest,
with the melon-shaped hat, was not too clever for his
avocation, and employed himself quite happily in
shortening a pipe- stick for my father with a blunt
earving-kmfe. We next stopped by the Eoman bridge over the
river Adonis, — deliriously cool water, and the arch high
enough to let ab the convents of the East pass under it
without taking off their belfries ; it was formed like the
bridge on a willow-pattern plate. At the Dog Eiver
there is another of the same pattern. After passing
it a few hours took us into Beyroot, and back to our
first quarters at the Oriental Hotel, where we found our
dear portmanteaus, but not " the " box, that never turned
up tbl we arrived in England : luckily the need for it
had ceased months before.
We heard that our friend Emih Pasha, after furnish
ing a house,, had been ordered to Constantinople to
command some division of the army there, his famous
black horse and the two mares had been poisoned whilst
at Beyroot, and he was not sorry to leave the place.
We were really unhappy at parting from the Hadji,

v Palestine and Syria 203
who had been like a dear friend all the time we were
with him ; my father gave him a letter to Colonel
Staunton at Cairo, who made him his cavass, and he
afterwards managed the Prince of Wales' hill journey,
no smab honour and gain to him, and if ever any one
deserved backsheesh he did.
We went on as far as Smyrna in a fine ship of the
Austrian Lloyds, chiefly remarkable for the fatness of
ab its officers (Italians). They seemed to have been
made on one model, as broad as they were long ; they
played at chess all day, getting into awful passions
when beaten, tib one feared they might "bust," and
beaming over with smiles and content when they won ;
the fat captain sat in his arm-chair and laughed at
both parties. I could not imagine a storm possible in
such a ship, they were ab so lazy and happy. I
watched the captain one evening amusing himseK on
deck by teaching two dirty little children to sit up
bke dogs and open their mouths to catch lumps of
sugar, which he threw in after counting three, to one
or the other in turn ; they got quite clever at the
game, and he leaned back in his big chair and shook
with laughter at them, and then called up his fat
steward and rewarded them with raisins and cakes.
The steward had a perfectly clean shaven round head,
like Leporebo, and laughed as much as his master.
None of these men could ever have been drowned, even
K the ship were wrecked, they were too fat to sink,
and must have floated like air bubbles.
We changed for the worse at Smyrna into a small
steamer fub of Greeks. When I went to look at the
ladies' cabin I found a magnificent Grisi sort of lady
sitting and doing embroidery, while the whole place

204 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
remained just as it was when the last harem had
left it. She told me she was the stewardess, and
brought out a box of Indian sbks, Windsor soap,
braided stuffs, etc., etc., at enormous prices, pressing
me to buy ; all at once she was interrupted by the
entrance of a still fatter stewardess, who said they
were to change ships. The grand lady stormed and
she stormed, and then she was packed off, box and all,
and the new one began wringing her hands in despair
at the dirt and confusion of everything, " che sporcheria !
che disgrazia ! " but never attempted to clean any
thing except one small oasis round the sheK on which
I was to rest my weary limbs.
We saw the Consul and his uniform, and some
young ladies in the very latest fashions, and then
went on to Syra and there joined the direct
mail from Constantinople, a perfect palace of a
ship, where I shared three grand crimson velvet
saloons with a lovely maid of Athens of about
fifteen, who sat and simpered and arranged her
lace necktie all day. She was accompanying a
most vblainous-looking old father, with the manners
of a dancing master, to see the world at Paris and
Baden-Baden, where he would probably sell her to
some old Baron as old and false as himself. Poor
child, I did not suppose she would care much, if she
got lots of new dresses and bonbons, and was away
from papa and from Greece.
There was a grand Turk on board who had lately
been appointed to some command, and had instantly
given unlimited orders for new clothes, made as much
in the European style as possible, so that he shone ab
over with their newness ; he had also encumbered

v Palestine and Syria 205
himself with spectacles, which were extremely painful
to him, and when he thought no one was looking he
took them off and hid them under his chair cushion,
not having yet made out the use of pockets. He
always took off those eye-encumbrances too when he
had to look at anything (an exertion he did not often
make). Some tobacco was brought to him for approval
at Syra, and the spectacles disappeared under the
chair, whbe he proceeded slowly to inspect and roll up
a cigarette ; he tried three boxes, and gave some to his
secretary to try, and after all sent them away without
buying, all in the most gentlemanly manner. This
gentleman ate with us, and drank wine too, but
objected to sausage : his secretary was a hunchback,
exactly like the man in the Arabian Nights who was
poked up the chimney, but who always turned up
again : I thought he would probably take considerable
backsheesh where he was going. The Governor had
a black valet, an A.D.C. who always sat on his chair
whenever he left it tbl he came back again, and a
stud groom who wore a dress somewhere between that
of a London policeman and of a stage brigand.
Costumes were getting fewer, and we soon had none
but Greeks left ; one old man in tremendous petticoats
always pushed a good chair after me on deck, and I
blessed his old gaiters, as Sam Weber said. He was a real
gentleman, unlike the pretty girl's father, who talked
of my father as ce vieillard, though probably some ten
years older himself. I told my father, and when I
afterwards trod on his toes at dinner to prevent him
from flourishing one of those odious things called
"toothpicks," he said with the greatest solemnity,
" Leave me alone, I am only showing that old Greek

206 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
I have some few teeth left in my old head ! " My
father never lost a tooth all his bfe, and knew not
what toothache was ; the old Greek's were apparently
not his own. My father had not yet forgiven Corfu
for locking us up, and would not land there, but Matteo,
the dragoman who used to bring us food, and administer
pumpkins and other wholesome cholera-giving things
in a kind way, came on board and gave me a huge nose
gay. My father had recommended him to three other
quarantine victims, who had taken him to Greece,
where they had been carried off into the mountains by
brigands ; they had a large ransom to pay, but Matteo
behaved so well that they had taken him back to
Engkind, and given him a watch, and some other
treasures he was very proud of.
We only stayed at Corfu a few hours, but what
strawberries and figs we tasted ! After a day or two of
shopping at Trieste, and a visit to the poor Emperor
Maximilian's castle near it, we mounted the steep rail
way zigzags and went on io Laibach, driving thence to
Veldes to rest, and wash, and bleach for three weeks
in that delicious place, one of the prettiest and most
healthy spots in Europe, with the best of inns, of
bread and butter, and mbk which tasted bke cream.
From our windows we looked out on a lovely lake, with
a high castle-crowned cliff dipping into it so steeply,
that I fancied it would have tumbled into the water if
it had not been held up by the tall trees which were
piled against it, oak, and beech, and fir trees ; a pretty
village peeped through them behind the castle crags,
with green meadows and hills beyond, one over the
other, woods, and gray rocks, and over all the snow
top of the Terglou, which could also be seen upside-

v Veldes 207
down in the clear green water. There was a pretty
bttle wooded island too, with a chapel on it, reminding
us of Orta.
We began to think this lake even surpassed that
one in loveliness ; it had no dirty town to spob it,
but was almost too green, and the sun of Italy
was wanting. It was a Badort, having both Sonnen-
bader and Bampfbetten. The first cure was practised
by lying on the roof in the noonday sun, with only a
trussel to shelter the head, and with next to no clothes
on : there the victims stayed till well done, and were
then carried into the great bath, or a bed of damp
blankets for variety; but this cure must have been
often interrupted in such a cloudy climate. The
Carinthians are a wonderfully simple people, and my
father said he believed that no foreigners had been in
their country since the time of Jason. One man could
hardly bebeve we had been to Egypt, but thought
it must have been a great help to us there knowing
the German language so well ; and a young official
told us he also had travelled much and far, for he had
been to Toulon and Marseilles ! There were no Bad-
gaste when we were at Veldes, only a nice little lady
from Laibach, with her baby of twenty months, who
could speak wonderfully plain, and tried to imitate all
we said to it in English as web as in its own native
Krainisch. It and its mother were the pets of the
place, and on her fete day she paid for a grand mass
on the island. All the people of the house went, and
we had to wait for breakfast till they returned. When
her husband met her before the house he would give
her a great kiss before every one, and they used to
sit on the bench by the house-door of an evening and

208 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
gossip with everybody who passed without any show
of being great people, though they possessed carriages,
and horses, and servants, and ab sorts of luxuries.
One cannot help bking such simple ways, though
these people, do not think, but only fobow one another
like sheep : but they had an over abowance of Sundays,
Fridays, and other fete days besides, when ab work
stood stib and the whole population walked up and
down in their best clothes ; the men in long boots and
gorgeous waistcoats, as heavy with metal buttons as
a doctor's boy, the women with enormous aprons,
white sleeves, and laced handkerchiefs on their heads
as stiff and prickly as a cactus hedge ; the smab
children being complete miniatures of their elders, and
all holding their prayer-books folded in a clean pocket-
handkerchief, as English vibagers do. The preache/s
told them to pray for the souls of the kbled, and the
success of the Kaiser's arms, and they did it with their
whole hearts, and then sang psalms over their beer
and braten all the rest of the afternoon.
My father was very unwell, and only fit to sit and
rest in such a place and talk to Tom, as he called the
baby, and the child chattered Krainisch to him, and
gave him his drum and handfuls of dust, and ab sorts
of childish treasures to keep ; but we made what the
French call "a great economy," bving at 4s. 9d. a
day with no extras.
From Veldes we drove up the Save vabey, and
dined at Sir Humphry * Davy's favourite quarters at
Wurzen, but were abowed no meat, it being Friday ;
and there was a picture on the wab, labebed " Freitag,"
of the Cure" in ancient knee-breeches walking into
a cottage where the people are dining, who are all

Villach 209

hiding their plates and giving their meat to the dogs
behind their backs : so I supposed they bved in a
wholesome dread of the priest there. After leaving
Wurzen we climbed a most steep hill and came down
on the other side in a series of jerks, the descent being
so sudden that ditches were cut across the road every
few yards to stop vehicles from going down in one
run. This brought us to the Drave, a torrent of
muddy snow-water. We found a comfortable inn at
Vblach, and over its principal entrance a swabow's
nest, with four young birds sitting in a row, and
gossiping about the people who came in and out ; the
old birds were as important as the landlady and land
lord themselves, who said that this pair returned every
year, and when the painters were at work they always
made them leave a square round the nest untouched,
so as not to disturb them.
We had debciously hot baths at Vibach, a bttle
wheel being placed diagonally over the Drave, so that
the force ofthe river against it pumped up enough water
for these baths on the bank ; they were surrounded by
a garden of carnations, roses, and all the sweetest
English flowers, and the old bathwoman told me to
pick "more, more, as many as I liked." We went
some way in the coupe" of the eilwagen, and afterwards
in einspanners, changing our carriage at every post —
the Austrian fashion : at one nice country inn the land
lady saw me give a penny to a beggar, and told me not
to waste money on such as him, but to give it to a poor
Italian pedlar woman who had walked all the way from
her own country with cherries on her head, and three
pretty chbdren holding on to her skirts. Such a picture
they made, and she smiled so sweetly when I gave
?

210 Recollections of a Happy Life chap,
them some trifling sum. Italians seem to shine in con
trast to Germans. We slept at Greifenburg, where the
landlady was quite blind, but most efficient : she said
her house was clean because she looked after it ab her
self ! and I saw her cooking our dinner and feebng her
way among the pots and pans, but she had a maid to lead
her to mass the next morning, where she went dressed
in a high hat like Dame Quickly. There was some fine
old point lace on the sheets of my bed, but they were
sewn to the quilt, which was only long enough to
cover two-thirds of me, and I had to give my two
ends turns at fits of the cramp ab night on the top of
a loose bag of Indian corn leaves. Why do Germans
make such uncomfortable beds ?
French and Italians were beating the Austrians in
Italy, and everywhere we saw groups of anxious people
gathered round some one who was reading the paper. I
tried to console one driver by telling him the French had
such good guns. " Good guns ! What matter ? The
Tyrolese are the best shots in the whole world, and
can do more with their rifles than ab the other nations
with all their clever inventions, and every boy learns
to shoot with a rifle before he has ceased to be a
chbd ! " This natural pride is very lovable, even
though short-sighted ! We met droves of great white
oxen with enormous horns walking from Hungary to
feed the soldiers in Italy, they were very thin and
tired, and we were told that 10,000 had gone or were
going the same road; we fobowed the Drave to its
end, and soon came to the Eienz, and on to Brixen in
an eilwagen again ; the good woman where we dined
handing round bits of newspaper with the pudding in
case we liked to wrap it up and eat it in the carriage !

The Brenner 211

At Mittewald on the Brenner we came into the
horrors of war ; a poor man trying to eat his dinner in
vain, having just returned from the East to hear the
Prussians had burned the town in which his wife and
famby had been left, and he was hurrying on to
learn their fate, worn out with neuralgia and anxiety.
The kind-hearted landlady gave him a poultice made
of scraped horseradish, which was a new remedy to
me. The man who drove our einspanner was crying
half the way, now and then "laughing to keep his
spirits up," he said ; he was a strange mixture, half
cracked with sorrow : " what for ? " he did not know ;
but the poor Tyrolers always went when the Kaiser
called, and would give the last drop of their blood for
their country ; but now they had been sold. There were
100,000 killed, he said, and then twice that number
of poor women and chbdren would pine or starve
from sorrow or want. Then he would wipe his eyes,
and flog the horses, and say the Tyrolese were a lusty
race, and shout out to a party of waggoners who
stopped the road, to "make way for the King of
Sardinia and his daughter, as the French had driven
them out of Italy, poor things!" The carters half
believed him at first, and we could only laugh and
look foolish, but as that king was the Black Douglas
of the Tyrol, the joke, K believed in, might have been
inconvenient, excited as all the people were then ; and
we were glad to be on the great highroad again, as in
the out-of-the-way parts of the country every one who
was not German was supposed to be Itaban, and they
were naturally not popular there.
Everywhere we had seen the miserable recruiting
going on ; the poor boys themselves as usual drinking

212 Recollections of a Happy Life chap, v
and singing and putting on masks of happiness they
did not feel, whbe all their belongings had eyes red
with weeping. We slept at the old town of Sterzing,
and then were dragged by the heavy eilwagen over the
Brenner, in sight of the wonderful rabway works all
the way. Sometimes these were hanging to the rocks,
sometimes crossing the valley high up on a cobweb of
stout fir poles, and then disappearing round some long
lateral valley and appearing again half a mbe above
the same spot. Innsbruck was depressed and gloomy
with bad news, and we hurried on by Landeck and
Feldkirch to Easatz, and so home.

CHAPTEE VI
IS THE DOLOMITE ALPS, AUSTRIA
1867
On the 28th June 1867 we left England once more,
my father and I, starting with Mr. and Mrs. Knox
from the London docks, rushing by way of Antwerp
and Cologne as hard as steam could take us, to Nurem
berg, then over the Brenner and on to Bruneck, where
we ab arrived soaked with rain and tired out ; but after
putting on dry clothes his Worship hurried Mrs. Knox
away on the same evening, leaving me thankful I was
not tied to a clever husband.
My father always enjoyed being in Austria, among
the simple kind people and cheap inns ; we took
our time, and crossed the Ampezzo in fine dry clear
weather, to find our friends already tired of Cortina
and its bad food; so after one long day's walk over
its beautiful Alps, they went back again to the
Pusterthal. Our landlord had no horses, it being just
haymaking time, so my father and I started off at day
light with a boy to carry our bags, and took a seven
hours' walk under a cloudless sky, over lovely meadows
and alps. At one place the ground was covered with
the large blue Gentiana acaulis, all turning their heads
to. the sun, we found edelweiss and delicate butterwort,

214 ' Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
with its long violet-like flowers, and a real tiny yebow
violet, sweet daphne, and blue clematis, growing with
the alpine rhododendron and white dryas. We passed
a wonderful eastebo perched on a dolomite crag almost
smaller than itself, stopped at a miller's to drink some
delicious beer, and at last reached Buchenstein, where
we lodged at the grocer's. Our host was the best
rifle shot in all Tyrol ; he was then at the festa at
Cortina, but had sent home three prizes — long gaudy
bits of riband, with a wreath of artificial flowers at the
top, and real sbver florins hidden away under them, or
covered with gbt paper stars. There was a glass case
in the slube quite full of such rubbish ; it was a most
quaint old house with kind friendly inhabitants, and
the whole vibage was perched like an eagle's nest, which
might have slipped down easily into the Fassathal if
one had given it a sufficient push; the white-headed
landlady was a sight to see, cooking in her triangular
kitchen, in which she could hardly find place to move,
as its fireplace filled up half the room.
It stormed with wind and rain at night, and all the
household rushed in and out to see if the windows were
really fast ; but I was far too sleepy to heed them. It
rained ab the next day too, so we had to give up our
visit to Caprile, and return as best as we might through
the bogs, lifting up loads of red sticky earth at every
step. After a most tiring drag Cortina was very wel
come, with its tubs of hot water, dry clothes, and good
(if not too abundant) dinner, while the old landlady,
in her tall hat and everlasting flowers, was stbl playing
that interminable game at cards in the saloon.
My father had planned to walk through some of
the Italian valleys from Cadore to Tolmezzo, and our

vi Cadore 215
landlord promised to order a horse to be ready for us
at the former place ; so we sent our portmanteaus back
to Vibach, and were driven to Titian's birthplace by
the youngest and most beautiful of the sons of the
house ; it was a real pleasure to look at his honest
gentle expression, he was also such a grand specimen
of humanity. The journey was a lark to him too, and
he was dressed in the most model Tyrolese style, with
his hat web on one side ; the valley looked equally
gay in the bright sunshine ; but when we got to Cadore
there was no sign of the ordered horse (haymaking I
suspect coming again in the way), and our friend said
we must wait a bit ; so we " did " the house of Titian
and ab the sights of the place and returned : still no
horse ! A return carriage wanted to take us down to the
Venice railway, but my father dreaded the heat of the
plains, and at last decided to return to Cortina, as they
told us it would be very difficult to get on by the hilly
roads beyond. Our driver was to have gone on further
to pick up his father, but said, in his choicest Ampezzo
dialect, that his father " would keep " if we wanted
him, so we turned back after dinner.
The house at Cadore was full of Italians doing
vibeggiatura, and we saw them all go out to make a
promenade on the high road, in full dress : there was
a great man with a yellow beard, and a hat brushed
to perfection, with velvet collar and new gloves, and a
fine silver-headed stick; his wife in a lace veil and
silk gown (all torn out of the gathers behind) ; their
chbdren dressed like butterflies; they took half- an -
hour's strob, and came back quite worn out for their
siesta, when they, no doubt, subsided into comfortable
dressing-gowns again.

216 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
We started through a violent thunder-storm, and
were much chaffed and laughed at for coming back
again so soon, particularly by old Lady Ghedina (as we
called the landlady). She and I having taken a most
sentimental leave of one another in the morning, when
she had given me some purple and yellow everlasting
flowers from her garden, to put in my hat, and never
to part with, probably believing that, like herself, I
lived always in my one hat, and that its fashion did
not change any more than those did at Cortina. I
bebeve she slept in hers ! The next morning she said
she wouldn't say good-bye, as we should probably be
coming up the hbl again at night ! They were all so
nice and friendly at the Acquila Nera. The practical
melancholy son drove us down to Innichen. He told
us of all his hunting adventures; but said he had
begun too young, and " spobt himseK," and could do
no more now, habe mich verdorben seemed an odd
phrase. The road is so well made that English horses
could have trotted all the way over it ; there are few
wolves or bears, and too many hunters for the preser
vation of deer or gemsen, though they seem to have
abounded before our friend was " spobt " ; he also was
very handsome, but in quite a different style from the
rest of his family, like one of Titian's or Moroni's dark
subjects. All these Ghedinas were fit models for a
painter, but there was consumption among them. The
eldest, who managed the hotel, had a pink flush on his
face, and ab his children died off in a sad way. His
wife apologised for not waiting on us, but her baby of
twenty -one days wanted so much attention. Poor
thing ! I feared she too would be spoilt if she did not
take a little more care of herself. Another son was

Hermagor 217

settled in Venice as a painter of some distinction, and
the hotel and the villa opposite were covered with
really spirited frescoes by his hand, the work of long
summer hobdays spent in his native valley.
From Lienz in the Pusterthal we drove by Ober
Drauburg over a lovely pass, with the deepest of pink
cyclamen under its trees, to Kotschach, a pretty village
with a stbl lake near ; it was ab a pattern of neatness,
including the young parson, and every grave in the
churchyard had a trim little garden on the top. My
bedroom was forty feet long, and had nine windows in
it, a table of minerals, a guitar, and a stuffed Lammer-
geier — all was clean and good, the only drawback
being that the landlord considered it his duty to
entertain us perpetually, and had no brains to do it
with ; but he found a cloak, which we had dropped in
the road, six months afterwards, and sent it to England,
directed to Hastings Lodge, 3 Victoria Street, Pimlico,
having copied ab the corners of my father's card at
once. The drive beyond was through the richest of
upland valleys, with magnificent fields of Indian corn,
bordered by many-coloured poppies and pumpkins.
At Hermagor we put up at a big old-fashioned inn,
where the rooms were full of curiosities. A toilet table
in mine was covered with old silver : looking-glass
frame, branched candlesticks, and a glass case contain
ing fourteen coffee pots and milk jugs, eighteen candle
sticks, eleven ornamental wax tapers, etc. — wonderful
artificial flowers were hung about it too in different
corners. The famous Wulfenia -1 grows on an alp four

1 Wulfenia Garinthiaca. This is its one locality in Europe, though
two closely -allied species have been found in the highlands of South
Western Asia. — Ball.

218 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
hours' off from Hermagor. I offered a gulden for a
flower to paint, and a man offered to go for 50
kreutzers more, to which I consented, but disgusted
my father, as he said such extravaganc'e would raise
the ^ hotel bill. The season was over, and I really
wanted this flower (which is said to grow nowhere
else), and did not think half-a-crown too much for an
eight hours' walk. We should not get much for such
a sum at Covent Garden. Alas ! they were all over, not
one flower was left, and the roots I sent home ab died.
The fishing was said to be good at Hermagor ; my
father hooked a good many, but the fish did not know
how to take a hook properly, he said, and sbpped back
into the water before he could land them, and then
warned their friends against tasting those foreign flies
with hooks in them. It was pleasant wandering along
by the clear stream under the fir trees, and eating
heidelbeeren, though such scenery never tempted me
to sketch : it is all too hard and black and gray ; on
wet days I devoted myself to the lovely flowers. On
the 26th of July we moved on to Ober Tarvis, within
half-an-hour's walk of the watershed ; this is one of the
principal passes of Austria, but not high, and decidedly
hot — cyclamen and Indian corn showing how low we
really were. It is a choice spot, with wide open alps
sprinkled with trees in every direction, the dark pine
forest within five minutes of the house, and four
valleys opening from it. A grand range of dolomite
peaks was near, on whose bare cliffs the sunset rays
played as many freaks as they did on the Jungfrau
and Eiger opposite Miirren. Some grandee reigned in
the place too, and had made zigzag paths through the
forest behind the house, and up to a summer house

Ober Tarvis 219

on a high perch above, full of luxurious seats, just
the place to bnger in at sunset. We two went up
there every night, but never met a creature ; the path
was edged with cyclamens, golden arnica, lily of the
vabey and hellebore leaves, with heaths and campa
nulas of every variety.
The hotel was a perfect menagerie of ill-kept mon
grel curs, puppies and cats, ducks and chickens, while
one gaunt turkey walked about the lower rooms and
the staircase, clearing off the scraps from the tables
with great dignity by merely standing on tiptoe and
stretching his long neck over them. These creatures
knew not the meaning of fear, and I had some
difficulty in persuading one duck that I did not want
him to sit on my knee whbe I ate my soup. On the
beams of the great hall, wooden saucers were nailed
for the swallows and pigeons to build their nests on,
and the landlady's children always took their meals
on the stairs! She herself was a thoroughly gut
verstandige hausfrau, such as Voss describes in his
Louise. She made wonderful mehlspeisen of all sorts,
and abowed neither chbdren nor mongrels to defile our
bed-rooms ; but it was hot, and the large grasshoppers
used to come in at the window ; whbe the one excite
ment in the day was seeing the post arrive every
evening at nine. We never missed it, sitting gossip
ing on the bench before the house, till it had come
and gone.
Our map had a false figure in it, which misled us
into going over the Predil pass to Flitsch, the hottest
dolomite hole I ever was in; a thousand feet lower
than Tarvis, it was drearier than the Finstermunz,
the rocks being positively bare all the way down.

220 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The people at the inn looked hungry for guests, but
we would not stop ; I could not breathe, and went up
the dreary road again the same day. The river there
was of the purest turquoise tint from reflected sky, its
bed being white as lumps of sugar, and both rocks
and road equally trying to one's eyes. The northern
side of the pass was lovely with flowers, the Predb See
of the deepest ultramarine blue among its tall Scotch
firs, pines, and beeches. Blue columbines peeped
through the alpenrosen, blue clematis had climbed up
to the very tops of the spruce firs, being just then in
its greatest beauty. It was a symphony of blues.
We found the house at Tarvis had filled in our
absence, but the landlady turned two old German ladies
(with pocket handkerchiefs tied round their necks) into
the street, and gave us the state room, a. huge apart
ment ; putting up a screen for my father at one end,
which I ampbfied into quite a tent with the hangings
which adorned the bed in the day-time pegged on to the
wardrobes by the help of my sketch books and boots ;
this fortification was so wonderful and successful that
all the household came in one by one to look at it.
My father wanted to sleep in the passage, but there were
already three men in possession there. After a day or
two at Wurzen we reached Vblach, and had another
delicious hot bath, highly necessary after living in the
menagerie at Tarvis. Wurzen too had been somewhat
comfortless. A kind of Mr. Fairlie had possession of
the post inn, with his niece, a French maid and valet ; he
said he was not uncomfortable, as his " people " looked
after things ; but we had rooms at the baker's, they
were sweet and had not bad beds, but everything was
black stib with the winter's smoke, and none of the

VI

Wurzen 221

window shutters would open, so that we lived in semi-
darkness, and had to do the house-maiding ourselves.
When it was fine, and we could feed under the great
chestnut tree, Wurzen was worthy of Sir Humphry
Davy, its prophet ; but when we were driven by cold
into the poky little salon, full of regular customers
drinking the feeble sour wine, it was not enjoyable.
It was a pity we had not better quarters, for the
country near it is lovely We spent a morning about
the Weissenfels lake ; the colours of its waters are quite
miraculous, with the most beautiful forest all round
it, and the wild strawberries were so large and abun
dant that I could easby have filled a good-sized dish
in a quarter of an hour. My father caught a pretty
trout with red spots, even in the full sunshine. We
longed to build a hut there and camp.
From Vibach we drove to Spittal, and on again
through a deliriously -wooded country, with water
rushing in every direction, tumbling past saw and
flour mbls. The common mubein was growing a yard
high, and each single flower was as big as half-a-crown,
and of the purest yebow. The cottages had such gay
gardens too, and there were even some inhabited castles ;
we met one gentleman with a nice-looking girl riding
bke an Englishwoman, who made us a pretty bow
as she cantered past. Some of the fields were quite
blue, or rather lbac, with a small campanula new to
me ; it grew in tufts of twenty or more flowers, one
or two only on each stalk; it was very wide open,
and ab the flowers looked towards the sun; the
shades were quite dazzling, but when I dug one
up the effect was lost, it wanted the rich setting
of white clover to keep it upright and show it off.

222 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The wild pinks were also most luxuriant, often bearing
six flowers on one head. We were both happy and
comfortable at Bennweg, a poor -looking post-house,
wonderfully clean, kept by a clever old landlady, but
the eilwagen only passed three times a week, and we
wanted our letters, so got a whole body of the clumsy
vehicle to ourselves, and took thirteen hours of it ; no
travelling (off railroads) can be more luxurious or
cheaper. Twenty-seven francs took us luggage and
all, and we had six horses to pub us up the first
ascent. This road was made by the Eomans and
never altered since; it is fearfuby steep, and goes
up without zigzags to the top, whence after sending
down the four extra horses, we were dragged slowly by
two only down an equally steep descent to the vabey
of the Mur (our old Gratz river, never seen by us
since 1848). After dinner we mounted again, this
time with two splendid cream-coloured oxen harnessed
in front of the horses as leaders : it is a glorious
pass, the Eadstadter Tauern, beautiful on both sides,
the top quite a mass of rose colour, from the Alpine
rhododendron (hirsutum) in its fullest glory : the place
was a perfect garden of all colours, and I longed to
take a lodging with the priest at the top.
Eadstadt was a delightful place for rest and for
painting Alpine flowers ; after a few days there we
went on up the valley of the Salza, turning up to Hof
Gastein, some five miles below the bad, where we
found so many bathers that it was noon before we had
time to think of taking baths ourselves. The bad-
man would hardly consent to our having them at that
hour at ab, every one bathed at six or seven, and he
began to quote the Herr Doctor, but my father told

vi Gastein 223
him that individual was welcome to hang himself, and
when he also told him he need give no change out of
a whole gulden, this same &cw£-man almost cried with
joy, and said he hoped we would come every day and
bathe at what hour we bked, and have the water as
hot as we liked. The water boils at the spring, but
they cool it down for the baths, through which it
trickles continually in and out. There are arm-chairs
in the bath, so that one's chin when sitting in it is
just above the water ; no hygienic boiling can be done
more luxuriously.
We walked up to Bad Gastein in the rain, and, in
spite of the glorious and romantic situation, took rather
a disbke to its great hotels and general dressiness,
which prejudice, however, wore out when we went
there to bve, as we did soon after, and got front rooms
at the Hirsch, a house which stands quite outside the
busy watering-place, hanging on to the green alp which
slopes at an angle of forty-five above and below, with a
bridge from each of the upper stories to the hill at the
back. In front we looked over the great vabey with
Hof Gastein in the middle of it, and wondered how we
could ever have stayed at such a low place ! Often in
the morning its church steeple only was visible sticking
through the mist, which hovered constantly over the
fibed-up lake it stands on. There was a garden with
arbours in front, in which we had our meals, and where
good bands used to play Mozart while the invalids
dawdled ; and there were delicious baths on the ground-
floor. A young Englishman was undergoing the cure,
he sat in his bath tbl his hands shrivebed up like a
washerwoman's, and then he mooned about the rest of

224 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the day ; I could not make out that he had anything
the matter with him, but thought he might, perhaps,
soon acquire an illness if he went on with the
system. The views and walks on ab sides at Gastein
are superb, but the great waterfall is spobt by its
ugly bridge and bath-houses. We seldom went that
way, as we could escape from the back of our house into
the most glorious mountain scenes and perfect solitude,
but the badhaus was sometimes amusing too, on a
wet day. There were two large glazed rooms hanging
over the fab, and damp with its spray. Inside was
a German lady squabing bravuras at one end, a German
man thumping the Music of the Future at another; in
the middle was an unquiet reading-room, and much
gossip and discussion about everybody who went and
came. "Did you say the Grafinn had taken No. 25,
it must surely be for her maid ! No maid ? Web !
Gott in Himmel" etc. etc. Whether the Emperor
Napoleon were reaby coming, or the company from the
K. K. Theatre in Vienna ! sechzig personen, and how
much they paid a head ? the weather, etc.
A little of this kind of talk soon more than satisfied
us, and after a fortnight we drove down the valley in an
extra post carriage with a Viennese doctor full of clever
ness, energy, and talk. His bmp son, whose life seemed
already used up by trying to keep up with his father,
had not even brains left to enjoy himself; the former
was a most amusing companion to us strangers, but
mein sohn looked infinitely bored the whole way. We
parted at Zeb am See, where there is a lovely lake,
and drove from thence on to Weissbach, where we
witnessed one of the severest thunder-storms I ever
remember anywhere; we just escaped getting wet

vi Hirschbiihel 225
through, and our little driver jumped with delight at
seeing carriage after carriage follow us full of dripping
tourists. The gasthaus was full, and the plaids,
which German travellers wear, had to be wrung out
by two women under a shed near. We saw all these
foolish people start again in the rain, ourselves waiting
till the beautiful evening calm came, then packed our
portmanteaus into an einspanner, and walked up by
the Seissenberger Klamm in two hours to Hirschbiihel
on the very watershed, where we stayed four days.
This was a delicious perch to rest on, not so very high
(for it was surrounded by large beech and sycamore
trees, as well as pines), but the walks in every direc
tion were most lovely, passing from one col to another
without descending, with glorious views of the Konig
See below ; while exquisite mosses and ferns, and great
branching gentians (asclepedia) made the foreground
beautiful ; the house also was perfect quarters, standing
alone with the little custom-house opposite and two
chalets — these completed the whole village. We ate
on a table outside from which we could throw a stone
into Bavaria below, and the front of the house was a
perfect flower-show, every window being full of pots.
The old custom-house officer and his wife sat on the
bench by their door all day long, nursing two black
puppies, and chaffing every traveller who passed with
a knapsack, so long as the fine weather lasted. When
it rained, they went inside and let the smugglers go
by ; there were plenty of travellers going and coming,
sometimes six were packed into one room — some nights
none came at all. But the old landlady in her steeple-
crowned hat was always in good humour.
My bed-room had a large crucifix in it, surrounded
Q

226 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
by a framework, over which two plants of ivy were
trained, and every leaf was washed each day by the
old lady or her daughter. "That young man" (as
the latter called her step-father) drove us down to
Berchtesgarden, and on to Salzburg, where we stayed
at the grand new hotel close to the rushing river
Salza, which brought down snow breezes as well as
snow water, both most refreshing in that hot, stormy
valley. Afterwards we drove to St. Gilgen, and spent
four days looking on the lovely lake of Wolfgang, and
watching the queer people who went and came from
Ischl. None stayed more than two hours, many not
half-an-hour ; the fat lump of a landlady and all her
belongings were oddities, and petted us very much for
staying such an unheard-of time.
We went up the Schafberg for a night, and saw a
glorious sunset and sunrise, and spent a long day on
the top of that curious cliff which forms a precipice
of 1000 feet at least, so perpendicular that a stone
dropped from the top would touch nothing tib it
reached the bottom. From the top one could see the
lakes of ' Mondsee, Attersee, and even Chiemsee to
the north, and six others to the west, with the lovely
Wolfgang lake at the foot of the southern or sloping
side. The gasthaus stands above all vegetation,
except blac gentian and Pinus pumilis, of which last
they make their fuel; their season is from June to
October. The gentians were most wonderful, one
hundred blossoms on one plant, like a ball of blac
stars (when they open to the sun), but they died
directly they were picked. None of those free
alpine plants bke captivity. The great, branching
Gentiana asclepedia grew in enormous quantities and

vi Ischl 227
large variety, some of it quite white, some of the light
est blue. A few Germans were staying in the house, who, as
usual, shut the windows as fast as we opened them ;
the ladies walked about arm-in-arm between two
guides, flirting with both, which must have been hard
exercise, something like that of the poor Sussex cart
horses, which have their mouths always kept stuffed
with hay when cbmbing the steep Hastings hill, being
tightly tied back with bearing reins besides. We
merely stopped a night at Ischl, and drove to " The
Mill" to have coffee and see the fashions, carriage
after carriage putting down its load of flounces and
dandy officers. It is very odd that that particularly
simple little mib should be so popular with all these
butterfly people ; it is " the thing " to exhibit there
every afternoon, though it has no view, no band, only
superlative black bread and butter and coffee. Twenty
years before we used to go and buy loaves there,
rolbng them down the steep path home before us, so
we easily found our way back, for the place had not
altered. Our house, too, was unchanged among all
the new villas.
We took a big carriage on to Aussee, but at Steg
the driver said he could go no farther, as all the oxen
were gone up the hill, and his two horses could not
manage what one had so often done elsewhere, so we
said "very well," and walked on, and after we had
descended on the other side, laden with flowers, the
carriage overtook us. It was a lovely walk, and we
thought again that we had never seen such a lovely
lake as that of Gmunden, with beech woods and green
meadows all round, and a little village with a visitors'

228 ¦ Recollections of a. Happy Life chap.
book, in which I saw written " Lord Smith und seine
wohlgeborene Consorte," a joke, I suppose. The clearness
of the lake is marvellous, the green Traun runs out of
it close to our hotel, a swift foamless run of molten
emerald; all that neighbourhood is most enticing to
linger in, yet we found no English there, though one
Austrian lady said she was so fond of our nation that
her girl was called Nelly after that poor little heroine of
Dickens, and her boy Dicky after Dick Swiveller ; she
used to come and practise her English on me while
the children were trying to drown themselves in a
boat. After a week we sent our portmanteaus on to
await us at .Steg, and walked down by the edge of
the lovely Traun till it lost itself in the deep lake of
Habstadt, where we were rowed across to the town by
strong women in white sleeves and aprons ; again to
Steg to pick up our trunks, and drive past Ischl to
Ebensee on the Gmunden lake — such a day of pure
happiness and sunshine ! We steamed under the great
Traunstein mountain to the end of the lake . the next
morning, and on by rail to see the Traun Falls, where
we rested through ab the heat of the day. A mill is
built over it, and its beryl-coloured pools (or rather
chasms of water) were swarming with trout under the
rapids. Shucho (the Danubian salmon) is also to
be caught there ; the rock about the falls is a lime
stone conglomerate.
We drove on through an endless spruce forest by
the side of the river to Lambach, thence by rail to
Salzburg and Innsbruck, and, over the new Brenner
railroad to Botzen, on again to Verona, which had
more charms for me than for my father, who hated its

vi Verona 229
dirt and its dear charges. The "Due Torre" is
certainly a strange contrast to the simple little post-
houses of Austria ; its people were most lazy and
unpractical, but I bked Italians always, and was
delighted to find myself among them again. There
is a subject for a picture in the dark church next to
our inn, which I always longed to paint, of a huge
marble gobbo or hunchback, holding a holy water
basin on his shoulders ; there must have been some
legend about him, attractive to young chbdren, for they
used to come in crowds to pat him, and kiss the patch
of bght-coloured marble, which represents his knee
in the midst of his yellow marble rags, whbe their
mothers would lift the little ones up to kiss his cheek.
These groups were most tempting to paint, with the
dark church in the background draped with red cloth,
but I never had time to attempt it.
The rail took us to Lecco by four o'clock ; we found
the last steamer had started an hour before, and that
it would be a week before another came, so we took a
smab boat and started, with a scowling sky overhead,
which we were told meant nothing. A storm, how
ever, broke over us, as violent a one as I have ever
seen, when we were half way to the point of Serbelloni,
our two men rowed gallantly against it, trying first
one side then another in vain ; it was black as night
but for the continual lightning which lighted our way,
and it poured in such torrents that though the awning
kept us comparatively dry, the boat began to fill. So
we put in at last to a bttle harbour on the west bank
secure from the wind, and my father bghted a smab
wax taper, whbe the man baled out the water. In
less than an hour the storm was over, and had been

230 Recollections of a Happy Life chap, vi
succeeded by a calm too dead to be pleasant; the
splash of the oars in the darkness sounded funereal as
we rounded the point and made for Cadenabbia, where
we were received as old friends again, and were soon
joined by the Ewarts.
After lingering a while to sketch among the lovely
villa gardens of the Como Lake, we went on to Milan
and Turin, and from thence to Aosta, and over Mont
St. Bernard to Martigni, stopping at Montreux to see
my sister, with her husband and Janet, who. left a few
days later for Cannes. Feeling as we did the sudden
cold of the Swiss autumn, we hurried home by Paris.

CHAPTEE VII
MENTONE AND SICILY
1869-70
On the 29th October, 1869, my father died. For
nearly forty years he had been my one friend and
companion, and now I had to learn to bve without
him, and to fib up my bfe with other interests as I
best might. I wished to be alone, I could not bear to
talk of him or of anything else. As soon as the house
hold at Hastings was broken up, I went straight to
Mentone to devote myself to painting from nature,
and try to learn from the lovely world which
surrounded me there how to make that work hence
forth the master of my bfe. I took our old servant
Elizabeth with me : her kind care and the entire rest
on the sunny Eiviera soon restored the physical strength
I had lost in so many months of anxiety and trouble.
The Hotel du Pavibon at the very western edge of
the town was debcious quarters. They gave me a
corner room on the top of the house, and sent all my
meals upstairs. I knew absolutely no one, could
devote myself to work and fear no interruptions.
The beautb'ul pine-covered point behind the house
gave me endless studies of sea and land, in which I
always found fresh beauties.

232 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
After about two months we drove on along the
edge of the sea to Spezzia, and by rab to Pisa. The
scenery was fine the whole way, but more particularly
about Massa and Carrara, and just at that season it
was hard to say where on the slopes the snow ended
and the white marble began. Pisa too looked lovely,
gbded by the setting sun, its fault always seems to
be the too great perfection of its group of. holy
buildings, a little ruin would improve its picturesque
ness ; but I liked then, as always, to walk through the
rainbow rays from the windows inside the Cathedral
and to pat the noses of the cold' marble beasts which
support Giovanni Pisani's pulpit, feebng myself in a
sort of enchanted palace, and also to look at the great
St. Christopher by the door, and wonder how he ever
got in.
We went on board the steamer at Leghorn by 4
p.m., but did not leave tbl the next morning, and
tossed about considerably in the harbour, but the kind
old captain abowed Ebzabeth to share the ladies' cabin
with me, and we were very comfortable. At dinner
we had a dish of brodetto (all sorts of fish) ; there
were six varieties on my plate, some of them small as
whitebait, with prawns and red gurnet, all good. The
Captain said he would not have had them if other
passengers had been on board, but he ordered them be
cause he liked them so very much. I could not make
out if he considered the dish too bad or too good for
others. The middle decks were covered with poor soldiers
wrapped in thin cloaks lying on the bare boards ; how
cold they were while we were in such luxury ! Just
before leaving the harbour some ladies came on board ;
I heard my friend the Italian Captain civilly fighting

Palermo 233

them m the passage and telling them " The ladies' cabin
was already occupied by English ladies " (bless him !),
so after allowing them to thump polkas on the piano
tbl their fingers ached, he' had them stowed away
elsewhere, and left us in peaceful possession of com
fortable quarters. The cold all the next day was
intense, the only thing to be done was to roll ourselves
up in blankets and cloaks, and sleep. The Captain
used to poke his great black head in at the door every
now and then, with some such speech as, " Now mind if
you want nothing, speak it the steward, he only there
to do it for you and he hear every word what you say,
ab right ? yes ! I hope very much." Good old man,
no countryman could have been kinder: he also
lectured me on the duty of keeping Elizabeth always,
she had known me long, and old friends were best :
and he was right, for though I used to grumble at her,
she too put up with much for my sake and was kinder
to me than I deserved, but the perpetual companionship
of any one is to me very wearisome, especially when
they have no absorbing object and work to do, when
talk or perpetual motion are their only amusements. I
advise no women travebers with average brains and
energy to cumber themselves with a maid in foreign
countries, however much she may be considered a
treasure at home.
On the 28 th of February the sun rose without a
cloud, slightly tinting with rose the fresh snow on the
mountains above Palermo. Their outlines were most
rugged and varied, reminding me much of the coast of
the Morea, and the scene became grander and grander as
we neared the great city, and saw its long line of bubd-
ings stretched out between Monte Grifone and Monte

234 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Pebegrino, whose isolated mass of red calcareous rock
is the most conspicuous object in all views of Palermo.
The famous plain of gardens, known as the Conca
d'Oro (from its abundant oranges), stretches out round
the town, 23 miles in circumference, to the slopes
of the exquisitely-shaped mountains, of which Monte
Caccio is both the most elegant and the highest, being
3470 feet above the sea. The absolute necessity
of custom-house officers requiring tenpenny worth of
tobacco to smoke, not being a new idea to me, I had
no difficulty or delay in getting into a carriage with
Elizabeth and the three smab trunks, and we drove
along the beautiful shore and busy streets of the port,
to the famous Hotel Trinacria, gathering a few hasty
ideas of Sicilian manners and customs by the way : for
instance : that everybody in Palermo had been having
a grand wash that morning, and all their clothes were
hung in festoons from window to window, on the roofs
or out on the balconies ; that most people lived on
huge purple and green cauliflowers, and that each
cauliflower was big enough to feed at least a dozen
mouths. These wonderful vegetables were piled up like
pyramids, in little yellow carts with marvebous
histories painted on them, drawn by brisk little
horses covered with gay tinsel trappings and jingbng
bebs, which generally went at fub gallop,, the
men driving them with many screams, and wearing
great sheepskin hoods and breeches with the wool
outside, — all seemed new at last, and novelty was what
I longed for after the Anglo-invabdism of the Eiviera.
That famous landlord, Signer Eagusa, had a strong
objection to travelling ladies, and always pretended he
had no rooms for them, except on the fifth floor, so to

Palermo 235

the fifth we went, and gained all the better view,
though I should have been just as well content to
have had a handle to my door, as well as a fireplace,
but I did not complain. Elizabeth and I could
always lock one another in when either left the room,
and we could get plenty of hot water to fill the
mackintosh bag, which if we made believe very much
was quite as good as a fire, tbl, alas ! it took to leak
ing. The view from my window was really magnifi
cent, though for one who had passed so many years at
Hastings, it seemed very odd to look straight out to
sea, and have the sun rise at one's right hand and set
on one's left. I saw a long fringe of white surf, and
beyond that the deepest blue, green, and purple head
lands, one over the other, the higher mountains looking
bke real Alps in their winter dress, the one permanently
white point of Etna made quite insignificant as it
peeped over, in the far distance, a hundred miles off.
Close under my window was the " Marina," the Eotten
Eow of Palermo, even broader than our own favourite
resort for idle people, with Judas-trees on either side of
the carriage drive and a broad footpath at the edge of
the sea wall. The sea itself was dotted with deep
brown rocks and fishing boats of the most picturesque
shapes. This Marina was constantly crowded, but I
never saw a woman or women walking there alone,
and very few even when escorted by gentlemen ; it was
not " the thing " for women to walk in Sicily, and the
Engbsh were looked upon as rather mad for doing so.
A military band used to play there on Sundays and
other- festas, when the scene became very gay and
carriages were packed round the drive as close as flies
on a Nubian baby, crowds of men thronging round them

236 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
on horseback, and on foot, and the carriages fub of
ladies. In the morning the Marina was usually filled
with the Bersaglieri practising various gymnastics
which would rather astonish and shock the minds of
some of our own well-regulated marching machines ;
their North Italian music too was of the wildest
description, and was as strange to these Southern
Islanders as it was to us.
Our fifth floor room was a receptacle for sick
furniture, and soon became also one for a sick English
woman. My first weeks there were fub of pain and
suffering, not lessened by my faithful attendant's tears
and repinings, she wished she "had never corned"
(didn't I wish so too), she thought she would " write
'ome and 'ave some one come hout," etc., she declared
open war with Eagusa, ahd told me " perhaps I was
not aware of it, but a young English lady died three
days before I corned, they was three sisters, and this
one was upset by cold like me, and when they corned
here she was took worse, and in three days she was
dead, and Mr. Eagusa was as ib-natured as he could
be about burying her." I survived that cheerful story,
and twelve pbls given me in eight hours, by a clever
young Swiss doctor, and also the grumbles. "Not
a chair fit to sit on, so 'ard, they made her hache,
they did, she thought we didn't ought to be made
to sleep in a hattick without a bit of fire nor nothing,"
etc. To me personally, old Eagusa was most kind,
when I went down after my illness, he made me
sit in an arm-chair in his little parlour, petted me, and
told me to ask for everything I wanted, offering me
a room with a fireplace too, but none had the beautiful
view, sunshine, and quiet of my first. He also told

Palermo 237

me to go to the Botanical Gardens, and not bother
myself with other sights for awhile.
That garden was bke the palm-house at Kew, with
the glass bfted off, such a tangle of palms and aloes
were there of different sorts. There were great masses
of queer medusa -headed aloes, with scarlet heads on
stalks six feet above the ground, then there was a
tank fub of papyrus, just enough to make one long
more to get to the Cyane. The plants were so
rampageously healthy — a perfect grove of bamboo was
growing with canes thicker than my arm, india-rubber
trees thirty feet high. All seemed well kept, though
doubtless, more might have been made of it in such a
climate K Dr. Hooker had been in command, with the
Engbsh nation to pay the bills. But even as it was,
it did great credit to the City of Palermo.
What a city that was ! even the short street from
the hotel to the garden was full of pictures, first
the picturesque steps of the Sparsino . convent (now
destroyed)," out of which the Madrid Eaphael was
taken. Under those steps was a brilliant fruit- shop,
and women sitting outside their doors, embroidering
on large frames, with hen-coops full of young
unfledged chickens by their side, brought out to grow
in the hot sunshine; women dressing each other's
hair, also in the sunshine, and men in ab sorts of
ragged sheepskin coats (like those of Hungary), play
ing cards at bttle tables, also in the sunshine ; bttle
donkeys with Spanish panniers fub of the same huge
caubflowers, or oranges, or seaweed. Great tall
fountain pibars, covered with pale yellow antir
rhinums and maiden-hair fern, were to be seen all
round Palermo, with tables under them, loaded with

238 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
cactus fruit, and women sitting by to skin them ; not
gipsies as in Spain, but figures nearly as picturesque
(woe betide the fingers of a stranger who tries to
skin a prickly pear for himself').
A pleasure garden adjoined the Botanical, fub of
sweet roses, heliotrope, carnations, and libes. The stroll
had done me such a world of good, that I disobeyed
my landlord, took a carriage and drove through the
town ; it seemed a mixture of Granada, Florence, Pisa,
Cairo, and Eome, ab jumbled up together. The
Martorana Church was my first study, the Mother
Church, bubt by the famous admiral of King Eoger
the Norman, about 1100 A.D., yet the mosaics are as
beautiful now as they had been at first ; they are on a
gold ground, and as rich in colour as those in St.
Mark's, Venice. Some of the designs are most quaint,
the portrait of the founder himself, for instance, is in
the form of an egg with gold network over it, and a
gray-bearded head stuck on the top — King Eoger's
portrait is in another part of the church, in the act
of being crowned by Christ, whose figure is not with
out dignity. The pblars of the church have rude gbt
Corinthian capitals, and the shafts are single pieces of
coloured marble, probably taken from old heathen
temples, being all of different sizes. Two of these have
Arabic inscriptions, and it was this strange mixture of
all ages which enhanced to me the attraction of ab the
ancient buildings in Palermo. , Of course there are
plenty of barbaric innovations in this church, more or
less modern, but even these are grand and gorgeous
in their way; the high altar is a miracle of rich
ornamental extravagance in lapis lazuli and marble,
so incongruous to the rest that it becomes almost

vn Palermo 239
harmonious from the excessive contrast, as extremes
are said to meet. Above it, through breaks in the
ceibng, the blue sky peeped in in a manner delicious
to an artist's eye, however unorthodox, making even
the lapis lazub look dull. This church was kept locked
up as a sort of museum, with a guardian to look after
it ; but for its darkness and some dozen vulgar glass
chandeliers hanging from the cebing, it would have
been a delightful place to paint in ; but one could
never get those chandebers out of one's eyes, however
much one tried to ignore them.
The same admiral who built this church, built also
a famous bridge, which stands high and dry, now that
the water has been so much led away for irrigation.
This is a very curious edifice, built (with hardly any
mortar) of a crumbly limestone fub of shells ; it
was strange how that fragbe material had lasted all
over Sicby, even in still older structures. The arches
of this bridge were sharply pointed (as in other
Norman works about the island) ; here there were
seven arches, with other connecting arches under
the piers, so as to give more flow to the winter
torrents. Some cypress trees and a tall water pibar
close by formed a good balance to the scene, and the
whole was backed by the purple hbls, which at sunset
made a gorgeous picture; at that hour too it was a
favourite lounge with the middle class citizens. The
road to it passed through a wide street of poor houses
apparently inhabited principaby by goats which all
took theb- suppers about that time, in front of their
dwellings ; every goat had a separate basket ab to
itself, filled with orange and lemon skins ; some mothers
had as many as three kids, also taking their suppers

240 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
after their fashion, with a good deal of kicking between
whbes. The Palermitan women are, many of them, very
handsome, and wear most gorgeous colours, bright
blue dresses, orange shawls, and scarlet hoods, they
only want the mantilla to be quite Spanish. I saw
a donkey with panniers full of richly-coloured gourds
or citrons, a boy with tremendous eyes lolling on the
top in a scarlet cap ; two men were on one ambling
horse with a gun between them, donkeys and mules
with high steeple-shaped ornaments fastened to their
saddles and heads, covered with red fringes and
tassels and bebs, all reminding one of Spain.
Farther on this road led to the foot of the
mountains, and to the monastery of Sta Maria di
Jesh, a bttle above the plain, from whence one gets
the best view of Palermo ; who could resist trying to
sketch it ? The view was absolutely perfect, with
Monte Pelegrino just in the right place behind the
city and bay, the towers and principal, buildings
standing out against the rich plain of marmalade.
The foreground, too, was most lovely, great umbreba
pines and tab cypress, figs, olives, almonds, aloes, and
cactus, with masses of loaded orange trees, and the
ground covered with asphodel and sweet violets,
almost too many good things ab at once, as the
foreigner said of the plum-pudding. But truly the
monks were to be envied with such a view and such
a garden ; there were also picturesque flocks of sheep
and goats, black, white, and brown, with shepherds
who played on reed pipes, and had no objection to
having their portraits taken.
There are 194 churches in Palermo! I did not

Palermo 241

attempt to see any but the very oldest, and soon
developed a perfect contempt for any which were built
after the year 1200 had begun. The gem of gems
was the Capeba Eeale, within the palace ; it is entirely
perfect and unspoilt by restoration or ruin; though
the colours and material reminded me of St. Mark's,
the work seemed richer and finer, the arches quite
unhke any others out of Sicily that I ever saw, except
perhaps the Touloon Mosque of Cairo ; they are
sharply pointed bke the Gothic, with a slight incbna-
tion towards the Moorish horse-shoe, and are supported
on old marble pillars with rude Greek capitals, in the
same way as in the Martorana Church. The warmth
of colour here was most debghtful ; every bit of wab
being covered with mosaics on gold ground, the ceiling
flat and carved and coloured in the true Arab style.
When we first went in, mass was going on at all the
four altars; the bishop in a complete suit of sbver with
a grand suite of attendants was at the central or higher
altar, and two other masses were being said on each
side of him in the two side apses (for all these old
Norman churches seem to be built on the same simple
plan of a double square with three curves at one of
the smab ends). There is also a side altar in the nave
of this chapel, where an old gentleman was celebrating
another mass all by himself. It was a gorgeous scene,
and every bit of it rich and rare ; there was no taw-
driness about it, no modern pictures or chandeliers
or other rubbish, but the whole seemed as if made by
one man, or rather genius, with a magic stroke of his
wand, having a few good materials from some Greek
temple to start with. Some of the mosaics were like
delicate miniatures and exceedingly well drawn. I
R

242 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
noticed particularly a group of camels worthy of Carl
Haag. They were doubtless taken from some that
had been left in Sicily by the Saracens.
The keeper of this exquisite church was a very. fat
old gentleman in a red waistcoat (very bke a robin).
He told me I might paint there ab the winter K I
liked, and never mind the masses, nobody did (and in
truth one old woman formed the whole congregation
during this one great mass and three small ones).
Both cockrobin and his eagle-eyed son urged me to
begin at once, and seemed to look forward much to
the occupation of watching me, thus acquiring " some
thing to do." But the beauty and compbcation of ab
this architecture dazed me far too much to think of
attempting to paint it, and I also resisted seeing the
Alhambra room in the tower of St. Ninfa above the
chapel that day. I hastened instead out into the sun
shine on the terrace behind the palace, whence a locked
bon gate led to a beautiful garden on the rampart. I
was turning away from it when a gentleman came out of
the palace and asking me if I would like to go in, took a
key out of his pocket and unlocked the gate. He sup
posed Madame was French ? then on being set right on
that subject, hoped I would stay as long as I bked, and
his son should fetch the key. The son soon followed
us ; he was debghted to have at last found a means of
getting over his morning, and made us look at every
tree and flower in the' garden, a work that gave me
as much pleasure as it did to him. It was an
exquisite cobection of rare and thriving plants, with
fountains, pipes, and running water everywhere. It
had also a greenhouse with a coffee-bush fub of
berries, the glass shutters being all taken ' off on the

Palermo 243

sunny side. The Bougainvibia was flowering gloriously
over the outside. Our friend gave us sugar cane to
suck in sticks about seven feet long, cutting his finger
in getting it, most good-naturedly climbing up and
tumbbng down the trees while getting us great bunches
of oranges, lemons, and citrons. There were large
bushes of datura, poinsettia, heliotrope, and salvia,
ab in fub flower, and on a dry terrace were arranged
pots in geometrical patterns, with circles of fragrant
carnations and squares of huge cacti and aloes of all
sorts, and other figures made out of geraniums, fuchsias,
etc. There was an arbour covered with a plant which
seemed all green leaves outside, but the inside quite
bned with long branches of orange berries, about as
large as currants ; they looked like some artificial
French ornament, so waxy and debcate. At last we
got away, loaded with flowers and fruit. After many
civb speeches at the gate I began to worry myself and
to think : Would " my son " have liked a five-penny
piece ? He was shabby and silly, but the son of
such a grand man ! I hope I did not do wrong in
taking him for a gentleman !
Things were very cheap in Palermo (except the
hotel), and fivepence went a long way; it would pay
carriage-hire to any part of the city, within the gates,
and as the Toledo is a mile long, the cab-horses can
hardly grow, fat. This is a beautiful street, perfectly
straight, with no shop windows, only splendid palaces
with huge gates and open marble porticoes (like those
of Spain and Genoa), endless churches, and a crowd
which is always moving, bke that in the Strand, though
somewhat less quickly. The carriages always go through
the Toledo if they possibly can, avoiding the other

244 Recollections of a Happy Life chap;
streets, which were much more entertaining to me,
being more irregular and picturesque ; odd things too
were always to be found in them. For instance, a shop
full of masks and hobby horses, the only occupant a
chbd of three years old, seated on the floor arranging
bits of orange peel in wise patterns beside him, and
evidently thinking hobby horses and masks were only
fit for grown-up people to play with ! he would not
even look at them.
It rained a good deal, and then the skies were for
ever changing their stormy clouds ; while marvellous
colours went and came in the sea. The river carried
its yellow mud far out into it, and the mountain sides
were covered with white thread-like streams. Then
every day the sunrise and sunset gave me fresh
surprises and wonders, I never saw two alike. After
a storm the sunrise would be particularly curious,
numberless little clots of gold seemed sprinkled over
the sky in the direction of Etna before the actual
sun appeared, and the whole bay was dotted over
with fishing boats and theb- twin reflections in the
calm shallow water, in which again men were paddling
about, seeking different kinds of sea urchin and shell
fish, the boats and rocks making a link between land
and water. Men were busy too on such mornings,
carrying away the green seaweed for manure in those
wonderful yellow carts, on whose panels elaborate
histories are painted by hand. A certain number of
artists are bcensed for this work by the authorities,
every cart is different and all are numbered ; when
one is bought it is entered in a pobce book with
its owner's name and the subject of its particular
illustrations, so that if he should do anything the

Palermo 245

pobce do not like, he might be found by describing
the vehicle he was attached to. A book might easily
be written upon those carts, and their strange treatment
by the painters ; the subjects are often taken from the
lives of the saints and the New Testament, but just
as often from Greek legends, Saracen wars, and every
other story that can enter into the head of a Siciban
peasant, among which Columbus, and Acis and Galatea
are particularly popular, and are often repeated with
variations. One morning I asked to be driven to see the
Cubola, and was told I meant the Cuba, an old
Moorish-tower now used as a barrack, and decidedly
not what I wanted ; probably a foreigner asking in a
London hotel for the London Stone would be told he
meant the Tower of London ! But I was obstinate, and
found what I wanted, driving to it through the long
straight Toledo, past the old cathedral, through the
Moorish-looking Porta Nuova with its hanging loggia ;
and then straight on for a mile and a half (so straight
that on looking back one could see the deep blue
sea through the two gates at either end of the Toledo)
past the old Cuba, and to the gate of Cavabere
Napob, at present somewhat out of repair. Here
the cabman picked up a big stone, beat it against
the door till he was tired out, and had a great deal
of conversation with all the neighbours round (who
in that locality apparently thought that houses were
intended to sit outside of). So we gave it up, drove
down a narrow lane to another door, and after more
thumping, a woman came and took us past the half
ruined villa, with its noble outside staircase, and
through groves of fruit trees tbl we came to the

246 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
precious little pavbion cabed the Cubola, a gem of
Moorish work, half buried in orange and lemon trees
and Japanese medlars, and standing on a thick carpet
of giant oxabs and violets, the oxalis being covered
with primrose-coloured flowers ; these, and the violets
and buttercups, were all mounted on extra long stalks,
some of them nearly a foot high. The many-coloured
ranunculus flowers were big as pats of butter. It was
a debcious place to work in, and the natives gave me
great bunches of fruit of the small Tangierine orange,
which scented our room for a week. They were cut
ting the oxabs for the donkeys and horses to eat ; it
fortunately takes a very large quantity to make the
poisonous oxalic acid from this plant.
We had 'days of storm and scirocco wind, so hot
that one longed for air, but so windy that it was
dangerous to open the windows ; many were broken,
the whole house shook ; it was terrific but grand to
watch from my high perch the sea sometimes becoming
almost invisible from the drift of surf which blew over
it ; I never anywhere saw such troops of white horses !
They said it was unsafe to walk through the streets
from the amount of broken glass which fell on ab sides.
It must be very bad weather indeed to send the women
of Palermo inside their houses, for they seem to pass
their lives sitting outside their doors, or just within
their entresol windows, which are so low down that
one sees them handing things to those on the pave
ment without the trouble of going up and down stairs.
They generally contrive to put on all " the three
primary colours at once, and what is more, to look
well in them, and every woman has at least one cat,
also sitting on her doorstep or on the roofs.

Palermo 247

I went one stormy day to see the old Moorish
Palace of the Zisa, a grand old pbe of yebow sandstone,
with a magnificent umbrella pine beside it, nearly as
high as itself. It had a most beautiful entrance hall
with a fern -hung marble fountain, and conduits of
running water like those of the Alhambra; it was
dreadfuby knocked about, and vbe frescoes had been
painted on its walls, but there were also some portions
left of quaint old Norman mosaics with peacocks on a
gold ground ; this palace is stib inhabited by a noble
Sicihan famby. The view from its top is grand.
The first time I saw it was in the early morning,
the sky was all in shades of gray with a gold glory in
the middle, long rays coming from it, all as soft as the
mottled gray lines on a guinea-fowl's back. Etna had
not been seen for some days, ab the snow was long
since melted except on its very top, the sea was in
deep gray shade, ab but a golden horizon line, and all
the rays were reflected on its calm surface. The old
palace, the cathedral domes and minaret-like towers
stood out, almost black under their cloud-shadows. It
was a scene to remember for ever. The garden of the
Duke of SerradKalco (near the Zisa), which is always
open to the public, is full of magnificent flowers and
trees ; the old gardener followed us in, begging us to
pick any flowers we bked ; a tempting invitation where
myriads of sweet violets covered the ground under the
trees bke weeds.
One of the oddest things in Palermo was to watch
the ringing of the great cathedral bells : a man seized
hold of a cord of about a yard long tied to the clapper,
and swung himself violently into the air, as if he were
contemplating suicide by throwing himself over the

248 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
parapet ; it was a most frightening and flendish process
to watch, and when all the bells were clanging at once,
the collection of apparent maniacs going through these
contortions was a curious sight. The children were a
sharp race, with beautiful dark faces, reminding one of
Muribo. One day when I had finished a sketch in
the market-place, a boy standing near cabed me to
show the same subject done by himself with chalk
on the pavement, and ask if it were not as good as
mine ? It was really very clever, and the boy's
earnest, witty expression was most delightful. I
never, while sketching in the streets, found myself
molested when I was alone : with an idle person near
who wanted to talk it was different, for one idle
person attracted others, and soon all peace was gone.
The water- works of Palermo are a grand monument
to the cleverness of the Moorish conquerors. One
heard and saw running water everywhere, either the
water itself or the fringe of maiden-hair which marked
its course ; up to the tops of the highest houses one
could trace this green track everywhere in perpen
dicular lines, and where there were no other bubdings,
the water ran up and down the water-pillars, just to
keep itself in practice. It is very pure, one of the
chief springs rises near the old Moorish palace of La
Favara, or Mare Dolce, which once stood in the
middle of a lake, filled ¦ from these springs. This
building is said to have rivalled the Alhambra for
richness and luxury. Now it is a mere shell, and
the water bubbling out of the limestone rock in great
abundance is turned to more useful purposes. In the
caves near by fossbs and bones of great antiquity are
said to be found.

vn Palermo 249
One day we drove through the gardens of La
Favorita under . the precipices of Monte Pebegrino ;
the long straight drives of the royal villa were edged
with thick hedges of laurustinus (with flowers much
whiter and fatter than our home sort) and china roses,
whbe pepper - and cypress - trees shaded the road.
We went through the crazy Chinese villa itself,
which had a ball - room underground ; there were
plenty of marble tables but only two beds in the
house. There were also terraces all round the
roofs, from whence we could see three separate
gulfs and all the rich plain to the mountains; while
waiting at the vbla my driver had picked a perfect
faggot of branches of orange flowers. Then he drove
us on to the Gulf of Mondebo, along a quiet sandy
shore fringed with broom, rosemary, oleander, asphodel,
and many prickly shrubs, also wild lilac. We returned
through meadows gay with lupins, peas, poppies,
tiny scarlet adonis, and white and gold linaria,
crocuses, and many less showy flowers, till we came
to the so-called English Garden, a long street, with its
houses half buried in gardens, the fashionable drive
at this time of Carnival. It would have been quite
discreditable to any one able to pay cab hire not to be
seen here. I did not know this and was rather
startled by coming unexpectedly into the midst of four
strings of carriages and receiving a great bouquet
without warning on the end of my nose, before I had
time to understand where I was. The bouquet had
been intended for a gorgeous lady in green satin in the
next carriage, who did not look over pleased at seeing
it rebound from my nose to the head of a dirty little
street boy who was on the look-out for such treasures.

250 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The ladies were all in the most extra outrageous Paris
fashions, one in crimson velvet, then a whole carriage-
load of gray satin dresses with pink hats to correspond,
another with a silver fox-tail stuck upright on her
head : there were only two carriages with four horses,
of which one had two postibions and two outriders,
all mere children in blue and silver with white wigs
like little bits of Dresden china — on the whole this
Carnival was a solemn affair.
Another day we drove to Bocca di Falco, a vblage
at the entrance of a narrow valley, where the wild
rocks on either side were hung with cactus, saxKrage,
and antirrhinums, and the houses crammed together
on the scanty scrap of level ground between them;
every first floor had its balcony, even in the poorest
houses, many of them much ornamented, and support
ing pots of geraniums, carnations, mesembryanthemum,
and other hanging flowers. Cactus leaves edged with
a dozen or more fruits of orange or red were also hung
up in these balconies to ripen in the sun. The women
were ab washing in the rushing stream. Carts of
white limestone were blocking up the narrow and ill-
paved street, one donkey had to walk in at a baker's
front door to make way for us, whbe a guide was hunted
up by the coachman. No one cared to go with us ;
after hard bargaining, a man only accepted the
proposed conditions upon seeing us start up the road
alone, when he followed us, and became at once most
kind and intelligent, rushing up and down the rocks
as eagerly after the flowers as I did. There were
great bunches of dwarf iris of different kinds, one tuft
with twenty heads on it : there were gray asphodels,
euphorbias with flowers like lumps of gold, and the

Palermo 251

bttle lilac anemone growing in quantities ; other sorts
were there but not then in flower, also white and
lilac stocks, acanthus, violets, and cyclamens, these last
with beautifuby cut leaves.
We wandered on through a valley of almonds
in bloom, vines, and corn, till we reached the great old
forsaken convent of San Martino, and entered the
court, which was fub of armed men who shut the gate
behind us. I confess to a sudden suspicion of possible
brigands, we came on them so suddenly, and the men
themselves looked so wild, but our guide told us
they were only peasants who assembled there for rifle
practice, so I wandered round the dreary old church,
looked at the organ, and pretended I was not in the
least hurried or nervous. On going out again some
of the men looked at our flowers, and laughed at us
for bking such common things. One of the party
went with us to the top of the ridge, gave me some
more flowers, and saw us safely off the premises. We
heard afterwards that San Martino really was the
meeting-place of brigands, and that we had been
in their very midst. The view from that stony ridge
was fine, with the sea and Palermo beside it on its
rich green carpet five miles off, the famous Cathedral
of Monreale and its attendant convents and town, at
our feet. Behind us the narrow mountain valley and
rugged hbl tops encircling San Martino, half hidden
by stone pines.
But I did not linger long, for our friend from the
convent was watching us, and we soon reached Monreale,
a most glorious church, so complete and gorgeous, yet
its form so simple that on entering it reminded me
of Santa Sophia, though the details were as elaborate

252 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
as the Capella Eeale which we had lately seen. For
the first time I found out what King Ludwig had in
his head when he built those gaudy erections at Munich.
But at Monreale nothing is gaudy, or new, or smab, the
great harmony of the whole being its chief 'merit, and
yet the details are endless. The nave is very wide,
with great gray marble pibars, and splendid marble
capitals all different, the arches on either side being
formed like those of the royal chapel magnified. Ab
the walls are covered with histories in mosaic work on
a gold ground. Over the high altar is a huge repre
sentation of Christ with a book in His hand in the act
of benediction. There is no rubbish, except perhaps
in two side chapels which were so precious that they
were locked up out of sight, and in comparison to
the grand old church they looked like toy -shops.
The whole cathedral is much lighter than the other
churches of Sicily. The cloisters are a perfect museum
of ornamentation, every capital and pediment of the
200 white marble columns being of a different pattern,
some of the pillars having mosaics let into them like
Edward the Confessor's shrine at Westminster.
The road to the capital was truly a Strada Eeale
(though a little mending would have been better for
the bones of his Majesty's carriage company). The
edge of the road was ornamented by marble balustrades,
vases, fountains, and guard-houses fub of active bttle
Bersaglieri (for our friends from San Martino occasion
ally come even nearer to Palermo ; some say that
more of them are to be found round the capital than
anywhere else — and are there not more thieves in
London than in all the rest of England put together ?).
Farther on, the road is bordered by palaces, more or

Palermo 253

less in ruins, with rich marble loggias, chiefly used for
drying clothes in ; one sees cocks and hens, pigs and
goats, walking in front of these grand houses, as if they
were their sole possessors. On the upper part of the
road I picked a tiny bouquet of blue and scarlet
pimpernel, wild geraniums, forget-me-nots, and other
miniature flowers, including daisies, which were all
ridiculously small about there. These last grew in
patches so thick and white, that they looked like
handkerchiefs laid out to bleach on the grass, some
thousands in a square yard, no single flower being
bigger than a threepenny piece.
On the 11th of March the day was so glorious,
that I ordered my cabman to take us to Solunto,
driving at first close to the edge of the sea, past
reefs of flat rocks through whose holes each wave
sent up jets and fountains, bke those at Beyroot. The
rocks were covered with boys hunting for sea-urchins,
a favourite food of theirs ; men were paddling about
with bare legs in the water, with a basket slung on
each side, fishing up cuttle-fish or polypi. Such
picturesque figures ! with their clothes knotted up
over their shoulders — all perfectly reflected in the
water underneath. The sharp edges of Pelegrino
looked exquisite against the bright sky, also reflected
in the blue bay. In the ¦ immediate foreground were
boats with men leaning over to spear the fish as they
darted beneath them. We passed through villages and
orchards and by the vblas of Bagaria to the foot of
the hbl of Solunto, where our cabby put us under the
care of an experienced guide who had " Charge Onnus,"
as Mr. Lear would write it, — such, a dear chbd ! who
led us with great gravity, his thumb in his mouth,

254 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
through cactus hedges and almond gardens to the
old Phoenician city which covered the steep hill
side, looking over the bay of Termini, even to the
point of Cefalu. Workmen were making excavations
under the direction of Cavabere Cavabari, and had
quite lately discovered three perfect rooms, decorated
in the Pompeian manner with painted wreaths of
flowers, fruits, and masks. The colouring of those
frescoes was stib wonderfully bright and new-looking;
portions of small temples, mosaic pavement, and paved
roads, beautiful Corinthian and Doric capitals, muti
lated marble statues, and vases lay scattered about,
amidst the cactus gardens, gray rocks, and asphodels.
A shepherd was playing on a reed pipe to his goats
close by.
I settled to sketch in one of the few shady spots
on this sunny mountain side; near me lay a young
man asleep on his face. When he woke up he told
me not to disturb myself, sat down for a gossip, and
showed himself fub of ideas about the use and inten
tion of every curious stone ; he afterwards mounted his
donkey and rode away, fobowed by two pointer dogs
and a big sheep. I thought he was perhaps the young
squire of Solunto. One of the pointers must have been
of Engbsh extraction, for he seemed to claim me as a
countrywoman, resting his great head on my knee,
giving my elbow jogs now and then (to the great
improvement of my work) and turning up his watery
old eyes towards mine, as pointers do, without altering
the position of his head. I found the mandragora at
Solunto, a plant with four or five blue crocus-shaped
flowers springing from the centre of foxglove-bke
leaves, all growing flat to the ground with a carrot

Palermo 255

root, which they say is formed bke a human body.
This flower was believed always to grow round places
of execution, it was supposed also to mark the spot
where some one had been murdered. We saw the wild
asparagus, too, in quantities, and the people were all
hard at work cutting down the old cactuses and
planting fresh leaves in the ground. They were
trimming up the aloes, cutting off all their leaves, and
leaving only the great seed stalks sticking up like
rows of church steeples.
On our return we met the country people coming
from market, a donkey and a horse harnessed together
in one cart, and the drivers ab asleep on the top of
their strange loads, sometimes a man and woman were
on one mule, sometimes a dozen people in one cart,
then fishermen running with a load of polypi on their
heads. These last were fit models for a sculptor ;
they ran nine miles and back every day, into Palermo,
to seb the miserable load off their heads, barefooted
and but very sbghtly clothed. It would be difficult to
find finer figures anywhere ; they were nice intebigent
civb febows to talk to, in spite of their hard life.
The people on that rOad had a very cheap and easy
way of starting a shop ; they merely hung up a chair
against the house wall by its back, hung all their
wares to its bars and legs, putting other things on the
seat, and it made admirable "fixings." Everywhere
people were sitting in groups on the road, knitting,
spinning, gossiping, arranging each other's hair ; pigs,
dogs, cats, goats, chickens, and chbdren were keeping
them company.
On the 8th of March my doctor wrote me " Please
don't go to Girgenti, an Engbshwoman travelling like

256 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
yourself with a maid, has just been shot there." I
went down to Eagusa, who got into a terrible rage all
over, and said, " That woman, he knew all about her !
He would like to write to the Times, but didn't wish
to have his name mixed up with the thing. Why !
she wore little curls all stuck round her face like a
Frenchwoman." That last argument was a settler !
So I soon believed from what he said' that I should
be quite safe in going to Girgenti, he gave me so
many reasons for my countrywoman's misfortune
there, that I could not but think, if the case had been
tried before him, his verdict would have been like the
Irishman's, " Sarved her right ! " but he was quite clear
that I need fear nothing, I should be as safe at
Girgenti as in Palermo. I felt a conscious security
in wearing no curls, nevertheless the doctor continued
to croak, and Elizabeth implored me with tears in her
eyes, whatever I did, not to believe a word old Eagusa
said, so I took my big letter to the Consul and found
he was dead, Mr. Dennis not yet come, the substitute
dead also ! My landlord caught me returning " Where
you been with that letter ? Why you not bebeve
me ? I tell you not fear anything, you not like that
woman, I know you; you go tell the Consul at
Girgenti you want to paint, he tell the soldiers and
they look after you," and he went off abusing " that
woman," and saying they were no brigands who shot
her. He also suggested I might ask my banker if
he were not right. Good old Mr. Morrison entirely
agreed with him, and kindly wrote a letter to his
correspondent, Signor Pancarmo, to arrange that I
should spend a fortnight among the remains of old
Agrigentum. He described me in his letter as quiet

Palermo 257

and genteel, belonging to the family of one of the
greatest bankers of London ! entreating his friend to
find me a decent inn and guardian whilst I stayed.
I wanted to go to Segeste, but Eagusa did not
advise my going to such a lonely place alone. So I
submitted. Before I left, the tab Italian waiter,
who used to bring my food upstairs, knocked one
day at my door, and told me to go on the roof, to
see the grand review below in the Marina, he always
pitied me for being so dull, all alone, and thought this
bttle diversion would be good for me. I found a crowd
of smart people on the balcony, Madame Eagusa made
way for me next herself in front, showed me General
de Medici, and all the great people below ; thick masses
of soldiery extending as far as one could see along
the Marina; but the great excitement of the day
was to see the Bersaglieri, with their cocks-feathers,
coming past at their peculiar running pace : the other
band stopped playing, and their wild shrill pipes
sounded their own pecubar bttle jigs. Every one
laughed ; for the Piedmontese were as much foreigners
among the Sicibans as we were. After the review the
Marina became crowded with carriages, for the first
time since we came. The winter season was over, the
Engbsh Garden now deserted, such were the laws of
fashion in Palermo.
We went to buy boots one day, and found very
good leather ones at seven francs a pair ; two men
and two girls were sitting stitching soles at two low
tables in the open shop front, the master sat at a
desk smoking and doing his accounts, while his wife
fitted on the boots. A man came by, with a large jug
of hot gravy, and a lump of cooked meat, and was
s

258 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
stopped to cut slices for the men, which he put down
on their tables, in an artichoke leaf, and filled a
saucer they had with them with the gravy ; they
pulled some bread out of their pockets, which they
dipped in the gravy, and thus ate their dinner,
assisted by two cats. There was a street near, fub of
boxes of all sizes ; many large ones, painted green,
were, I imagined, like those in Syria, intended for
holding the bride's trousseau; so many Eastern customs
are stbl left in Sicily.
One day (finding ourselves too early for the
Museum) I told our cabby to make a giro, and we
went on and on, till we found ourselves under the
cliffs of Pelegrino. As the day was fine, I resolved
to walk up the curious zigzag road, it was a real
carriage road, though none but an idiot would think
of driving a horse up its steep pavements. The
mountain, which looked so bare from below, had
plenty of green between its rocks and stones ;
numbers of horses, mares, donkeys, and their young
famibes were kept up there, and were scrambling
all over its top ; there was a constant traffic of
shepherds and sportsmen besides (for many kinds of
wild birds built in its crannies). The smab convent
and shrine of Sta Eosaba, a most picturesque building,
was crammed into a crack in the bmestone, which is
painted in patches of bright colours, the chapel itself
being placed inside the cave where the Saint bved -and,
died : stalactites ornament the roof, which is greatly
disfigured by leaden pipes and gutters placed there to
prevent the heads of bebevers from being dripped
upon. Under one of the altars is a really beautiful
marble figure of Eosalie, lying on her back, as she was

Palermo 259

found, but now dressed up in gold and silver. It
could only be seen by crouching down on one's knees,
and holding a bit of candle in one's hand. On the
top of the mountain the air was most enjoyable ; the
walk down from it was really hot.
Another day we went to the convent of Baida,
which was then turned into a hospital for old men:
a most dirty remnant of a monk showed us about,
deploring the new state of things, "there were only
three brothers left, one of them bedridden, and we
women might come in as much as we liked." We
made great friends in spite of his gloomy depression ;
he showed me ab his treasures, including the thing he
valued most himself, a horrid old bird's-eye view of
Eome. He pointed out ab the fountains and statues,
and seemed never tired of talking about it ; he had
also some mummy saints in glass boxes, and he climbed
up into the trees and gave me a great branch of large
red oranges, three or four on each bunch. How good
those oranges of Palermo were ! We had strawberries
too before we left, small like Alpine ones, over which
we squeezed orange juice ; a delicious combination. •
On the 1 8th of March we steamed out of the beauti
ful harbour, and saw it for the last time, catching just
one peep more of the town over the Gulf of Mondebo.
There seemed a great family likeness between the
different mountain capes of that coast, and their
angles are unusually acute and decided. We kept
very near the shore all the way and got to Trapani
harbour before dark, and to Mazzara at daybreak, having
passed Marsala in the night. At Sciacca the vessel
also stopped, but not long enough for one to land. It
was tantalising skimming round an interesting coast in

260 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
this way, but the land journey was not considered safe
at that time. Heraclea only exists as a name, and is
represented by some mounds of broken pottery, but our
vessel gave a sort of jump as it passed over the sand
bank brought down by the river Helicus, the ancient
boundary between Greeks and Carthaginians in Sicily.
At dinner the captain asked me what I was
going to do at Girgenti, and if any one expected me
there, for it was an awkward place to get to, par- ,
ticularly in such weather, being four or five mbes
inland, on the top of a high hill, so I pulled out my
precious letter for him to read. He said he would
see I got safely on shore, and on to my destination,
and when we arrived at the port, he introduced me
to a tall man, with a beard, the agent of the Florio
Company. This gentleman took me and my encum
brances on shore in his own boat, and would let me
pay nothing, but found porters, and saw me through
the custom-house, depositing me in his office whbe
he went and found Signor Pancarmo's agent, in whose
care he left me. That gentleman was even more kind,
and insisted upon going himself up in the fly with
us to Girgenti, which stands 1240 feet above the
sea ; the straight road by which we ¦ mounted was
probably made before the age of zigzags, it is crueby
steep to call itself " carrozzabile," and was then a
perfect torrent of mud after the recent rains (which
were still pouring down with fury). The road seemed
ab one equal pull, and when at last we reached the
city, the street was broken up into the semblance of
a stonemason's yard, with deep pools between the blocks
of stone. So we all turned out, and had to take
porters over them, and to forsake the carriage ; how it

vii Girgenti 261
ever turned I cannot imagine. As for us, we mounted
up the bed of a small stream and through a low door
(without any sign or name over it), then up a dark
narrow staircase for three stories, tbl we finally came
to a long passage with doors on either side : here we
found at last a large airy room, with.tbed floor and
three beds, and two large windows.
My good friend from the port arranged everything
he could think of for our comfort, and when I attempted
to thank him, said, " It was always such a pleasure to
help a foreigner, and it had been quite a pleasant
excursion for him ; " then after awhile he walked away
down the hbl again in the rain. After he was gone came
Signor Pancarmo himself, not the old man I expected,
but quite young and a most finished fine gentleman.
He offered to do everything under the sun for me,
understandable and not understandable (for I had
not the gift of tongues), but one thing he was positive
about, that if I had a proper man to look after me,
I was safe to sketch as much as I liked in Girgenti ;
and he put himself, his carriage, and horses all at my
disposition, in true Spanish style, and said he would
call the next morning and drive me down himself to
see the ruins ; and arrange for my work afterwards.
When he was gone we tried two of our three beds
and found them decidedly good to sleep on, and the
next morning were awakened by scuffling in the
passage, and rude thumps at the door : we opened it
cautiously, and behold ! a huge white goat, with long
horns and hanging ears, rushed in and on to the
balcony, which I believe was his usual "morning
room," for he repeated his visit every morning ; it was
particularly sunny, and he had such a view there !

262 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Hanging over the untidy street, one could see across the
low houses opposite to the undulating country about,
and beyond were old Agrigentum and the blue sea,
while part of the steep city of Girgenti rose on the left
hand with the rock of Eupe Atenea above it. Out of
the other window was another street view with the
river Drago winding amongst a waving sea of green
corn and cactuses, dotted with carob and olive trees ;
all vegetation there was much, more forward than it
had been at Palermo. They fed us well from a trattoria
downstairs, and gave us fennel roots trimmed like celery
for dessert. Elizabeth had "a 'eadache," and would
not go out, and for some time past had made up her
mind that we " would " be shot at Girgenti, so it was
best for her to stay quiet, thinking, apparently, like
the hero of Mrs. Sartoris' clever sketch, "Ursula, there
is danger, I will leave thee ! "
We really were very well off in the hotel, the
quiet back entrance was a great luxury for shy people,
for all the gossiping shops were just on the other side
of the street in front of the house. There were
generally about a dozen "swells" at the tailor's
opposite, helping one another to do nothing; that
occupation lasted the greater part of the day. I
understood Signor Pancarmo's civilities so badly that
I was not quite sure that he did not offer me some
of them to ride round, and round with me every day,
taking turns at the work himseK. He was a sort of
Marquis of Carabas in the place. He not only talked,
but did me much practical kindness during my stay
there. He drove me down to the temples the first day
in a phaeton which would have looked well in Hyde
Park, drawn by a pair of noble Englilh horses, with

vii Girgenti 263
long red tassels at their ears and next to no harness on ,
their backs ; the groom, who sat behind, was as much
like an English groom as it was possible for tailors to
make him, and folded his arms in the true manner of
the race as we trotted down a very steep, but not bad,
road to the long line of temples below.
The Concordia is as perfect as the Theseum at
Athens, minus the roof. Juno Lacinia beyond is an
exquisite collection of standing columns, with but
little of the cornice left ; much less perfect but more
picturesque, it is a trifle larger than the other, but
built on the same plan, having six columns in the
portico, whereas the Athenian temples have either eight
or four. Ab the temples of Agrigentum are bubt of a
yebow crumbbng conglomerate stone, full of shells, so
hobowed and carved by Time that they might be well
imitated by rough cork bark; they had once been
plastered over, but bttle of this is left. The pillars
are generally simple Doric, with flutings like the
Parthenon ; their chief attraction to me consisted in
their situation, hanging as they do over a steep cliff
of the same grotesquely hollowed rock on the one side
and having the richest vegetation on the other.
That first day we followed the edge of the cliff,
past masses of old wall with hollows for tombs in
it and in the rocks beneath, then through the formless
masses of mighty stones which are all that earthquakes
have left of the huge Temple of Hercules, with its
large segments of pblars and capitals sunk deep in the
ground ; it was almost as great a puzzle to know how
it tumbled down as how it had been erected. Then we
went over what had been the Porta Aurea to another
heap of stupendous stones called the Temple of Jupiter

264 Recollections of a Happy Life

CHAP.

Olympus. Many of the columns here were only rounded
on one side, so that the square side faced the interior
of the building. In that temple also once stood
eleven giant figures — the thirteen stones which formed
one of them had been laid out on the ground and
covered about twenty-six feet in length. It made a
fine subject for a picture, half buried as it was in
flowering asphodel, with the city of Girgenti seen on
the hbl beyond ; that temple seems to have been
unusual in its design, and the position of those great
figures is still much disputed by architects. We
visited next the pretty Temple of Castor and Pollux ;
whose four beautiful columns with a very rich bit of
entablature and one fragment of its pediment stand
among slender almond and pomegranate trees, and
are gems of beauty and grace. The background here
is filled up with the richly- wooded and cultivated
country beyond the Piscina, bounded by the Hill of
the Brazen Bub, with the two columns of the Temple
of Vulcan in the middle distance.
The country was then most enchanting (20th
March), every bush had its freshest green, even the
slow old figs with their invisible flowers were all at
their best. The chief guide of the place met us when we
first left the carriage, and Signor Pancarmo engaged him
to attend on me. Every fine day, as long as I stayed,
he was to be at my door at sunrise and accompany me
wherever I liked to go until sunset. My protector then
drove me to the consul's and told him I spoke Italian
to perfection (after having been a victim to it all the
morning !). He requested the consul to let the mayor
know that I was to sketch at the ruins a fortnight,
and undertook himself to tell the captain of cavalry to

vii Girgenti 265
send down some dragoons to look after me : there was
no necessity for all this, he said, but the late accident
had annoyed the inhabitants much, and he wished the
world to know that all Englishwomen were not shot
at Girgenti ! After which I went home to rest, and
spent the rest of the day in painting a bunch of unripe
almonds, soft, velvety things, which the natives delight
in eating, shells and ab, in their soft state, when the
nut is little more than a white, slightly acid milk.
The next day I indeed felt greatness thrust upon
me, for I walked to the ruins with a suite of: one
guide (in a chimney-pot hat), four men, one horse, four
guns, and three dogs. They made a jolly party, and
seemed to think they were out for a lark, and when I
gave the old guide the remains of my luncheon, he
divided it with ab the rest, so I took care in future to
take a good supply ; my only danger was from a habit
my guardians had of wasting Victor Emmanuel's
powder on every smab bird which had the ill luck to
come near us. The temples were worth some trouble
to paint, their beauty seemed to grow greater the
longer I knew them and their surroundings. The
strange old (but comparatively modern) city of the
middle ages, perched up on the top of a mountain
above them (the original Acropolis of the Greek city),
was full of life, and had a great trade in sulphur, and
many English and French were employed at the mines
near, but they stib had to send down to the old Greek
springs for water to drink.
It took me a good hour to get to my work every
day, and I was too tired at night to accept Signor
Pancarmo's kind offer of taking me to the opera ; but
they had one, where they used to perform Hamlet,

266 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
Othebo, and all kinds of outlandish pieces. The people
were all most friendly, Elizabeth got quite happy and
safe, walked down every day and enjoyed her picnic in
the fields ; it was fun to her, but as usual none to me,
for I could not do good work in the midst of such a
crowd of idle people. I could never forget the quantity
of subjects I wanted to try, nor that ab these people
expected superhuman wonders which would never come
from my poor feeble fingers. But still it was most
enjoyable. I found abundance of smab bee orchises
of different sorts, and the most lovely miniature blue
iris, which shut up after noonday, and did not open
very early either ; they cabed them ten o'clock flowers
there, and their scent was bke yanbla. One hanging
rock on our way was covered with caper plants, mesem-
bryanthemum, antirrhinum, and cistus of different
colours.1 One morning it was dub, and I gave up ab thoughts
of going down-hib, then it cleared, and the old guide
came back, and took me a long walk by the ancient
theatre and amphitheatre (mere mounds of earth).
From hence we got views of ab the seven temples,
and of the Valley of the Piscina, a great chasm with
red cliffs fringed with cactus, and gardens of wondrous
green within; this was formerly fibed with water,
full of fish and bathers, it is now a perfect paradise
of luxuriance : the wbd fennel with its yebow flower
stalk (often six feet high) rivals the agave in pictu
resqueness, and is used instead of birch as a rod for
the correction of Sicilian school-boys. The acanthus,
also, was a magnificent weed there, the blue minor
convolvulus, and creeping rose-coloured ipomsea, with
iris, red antirrhinum, valerian, and giant mignonette,

Girgenti 267

flourished all over the rough ground. Eough gangs of
people were hoeing the oats (which grew nearly a
yard high in many places) though the grain had not
begun to show. The ugly railway was eating its way
most ruthlessly through tombs, aqueducts, and other
old Greek remains. We rested awhile by the two
pillars of the Temple of Vulcan, one of which is built
into the wall of a farm house. I once took shelter
from rain at that spot, sketching the other pibar in its
bed of cactus and acanthus, with a fine old caruba
near it, the Temple of Castor and Pobux near the
ravine, and the sea line over all in the far distance.
Two of my dragoons arrived, who said they had
been hunting us all the morning, then four more
came and it cleared, so we went on to finish some
work at the Juno temple. A party rode past us
there, and the guide told me one of them was an
Englishman, a very great grandee, a count who. bved
always there for the sake of sulphur — rather an odd
description, I thought.
Another wet day we went up to the topmost point
of Girgenti, and looked at the sulphur mountains behind,
and the cloud which covered Etna ; then went into the
cathedral which has a strange old Norman tower, its
windows fibed with odds and ends of carvings from old
heathen temples ; inside all is whitewashed and dis
figured, but it contains one magnificent old Greek sarco
phagus, covered with noble sculpture work, generally
supposed to be the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus.
This beautiful specimen of Greek art has a gaudy modern
cover and case, the inside is fibed with plaster, and
in the middle is sunk and hidden a bronze vase the
size of a child's bath, now used for christenings, but

268 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
which stood formerly on the back of a ridiculous
marble elephant, stbl standing close by, with only the
iron pin sticking up from its back on which the tazza
used to rest : it might have been a gigantic castle for
the Gigante of the Jupiter Temple to play chess with.
This curious animal and its vase were also found in a
Greek tomb of Agrigentum. We went up a low steep
stair, without turnings, hollowed in the thick wall of
the Norman tower, to the library, and were shown the
great curiosity of the place, an autograph letter written
by the devb himself, which "must be his writing because
no one could read it ! " We saw also a most beautiful
Greek vase covered with figures, which was kept in a
cupboard, standing on the backs of some uneven books,
with others piled up round it; it was pulled down
by one ear to be shown, poor vase ! No wonder the
Marquis of Carabas wished to have a good museum
in Girgenti ; the books looked equally uncared for,
dust being their principal binding. Then, we went on
to the Temple of Jupiter Polieus, which had appa
rently swallowed a small church : the basements of
the Doric fluted columns, and the three steps on
which they stood, might be felt (not seen) in a dark
vault. A dozen natives enjoyed helping us to feel it,
one bghting a cigarette to show us the way : but after
that I was caught by my dragoons, who said the day
was clearing, it was a pity not to go down to the
temples, and might they fetch " the roba-ro V as they
called it, for Sicilians bke lengthening all their words.
I had a good day's work, with only my particular
policeman (whose name was Cicero, and who generally
carried his bttle boy of four years old upon his shoulder)
and the other volunteer, boys, as companions, these last

Girgenti 269

considered it their duty to steal unripe almonds and
beans from the orchards for us, and always had a jug
of fresh water handy ; we were a merry party. The
pobceman -and dragoon shot small birds for my supper
(which they always had returned to them to eat them
selves), both men also carried classically-shaped vases
fibed with good red wine, for the use of the Signorina
(which she used in the same way to their entire satis
faction). After sketching myself half dead, we crossed
the plain to see all that was left of the Temple of
iEsculapius. If I had followed the advice of Mr.
Dennis, in Murray's handbook, I should perhaps have
done wisely and saved myself trouble, but every step
showed me some new flower, fossb shell, or other
curiosity, and I could grudge no fatigue, as useless, in
such a place. I had to go on with my train behind
me, for if I sat down or looked tired, I found my
dragoon's jar of wine held to my lips, before I had
time to say . " no thank you." I dropped an artist's
pin in the road, as I walked one day ; the next moment
saw his great palm in front of me, with the tiny thing
in the middle of it.
When I paid my bib for food at the inn they did not
receipt it, and said why should they, if I kept it and
they had no other? but they scribbled pagato all over it
as a joke to please me. The landlord had a beautiful
voice and played the accordion as accompaniment, on
fitc days many visitors used to come and bsten to him,
and sit with his nice wife ; why did they bve in such
a pig-stye ? I could not understand it, for they kept
our room clean enough. The Sicilian clocks have an
odd method of striking from one tbl six four times a
day, beginning their one at our two and at eight ; but

270 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
if they talked of time, they used the Neapolitan hours,
talking of seventeen o'clock for instance : the clocks
are figured bke ours, but the hands always go an hour
later, but as our guide said " they are only intended
for common people," he himself had a regular English
watch and kept ordinary time. He was always talking
about the old Greeks, and had no other ideas in his
head. It was amusing to hear him rigmaroling to
the guards, who would go off to frighten some birds,
then return and wake up the old gentleman to tell
them some more stories about his Greeks. He had
told these stories so often that he almost believed he
had dined with Gellius and kept his corn in those huge
jar-shaped caves in the cliffs. There was a fine frag
ment of a temple in the garden of a bubding half
farm-house half wine-shop, with a highly-ornamented
cornice, all amongst orange trees and myrtles, with
great umbrella pines over it, the quaint old Saracen
walls and towers of Girgenti behind all.
One day, whbst painting in the fields, the king of
all the native gossips came and said magnifico a
great many times, then told me I must go and see
Cavabere Politi, one of the most remarkable men of
the age, and that Dumas was writing his life : this
gentleman was the local antiquarian of Agrigentum.
I readily promised to go, and sent a message to say I
was coming. Meanwhile, my guards had made a fire,
and were very busy collecting and roasting small snabs
which abound on the olive trunks and roots, and feed
on the young shoots ; they were really very good, tasting
like hot olives. They were served up hot to me, on bread
and butter, with a large fig leaf for a dish, the guide's
tall chimney-pot hat for a table ; this same unfortunate

vu Girgenti 2 7 1
old head-cover having served as a screen to keep the
wind off the fire, during the process of cooking. Another
day we had another specimen of cooking from the same
hands. They collected and chopped up herbs and
other good things, then scooped out the middles of
some artichokes, fibing them up again cleverly with
the mixture, and after boiling, peppering, and salting,
presented them to us by their long stalks with a leaf
wrapped round to save burning our fingers ; they were
even better than the snails. Whbe I was eating these
delicacies, I felt a touch on my elbow, and there was a
bttle one-eyed boy, who did the housemaid's work at
the hotel, dressed like a young gentleman, with a cigar
in his mouth ; it was a festa, and he had spent his few
hours of hobday time in running down to see how I
was getting on. He was a dear boy, and a good proof,
K one were wanted, that beauty comes more from ex
pression than features, for nature had treated him very
unkindly in her modelling, yet he had one of the
pleasantest faces I ever saw. I had quite a party of
nice chbdren that day, sitting near the Tomb of Theron
amongst the corn and pink gladiolus. Eosalie, the
pretty daughter of Cicero, sat by me all day in
gorgeous - coloured clothes and most uncomfortable
boots, bought new for the occasion, poor child !
On returning, I went to see Signor Politi, the
famous old artist of Girgenti, who was then between
eighty and ninety years old. He was quite bedridden,
but his mind was very active ; he told me of all his
travels, and of the quantity of work that he had done,
bringing out the few words of Engbsh he knew so
sweetly to please me. His bed was in an alcove of a
great room, with little furniture, but crowded with

272 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
pictures, hung from floor to ceibng: almost ab had been
the work of his old age, after all power of hand and
eye was gone ; many copies of. Italian pictures were
amongst them. His handsome son took me to see
another roomful, where I found a Madonna with the
dead Christ, of exceeding beauty, done ten years before ;
his son's face brightened as I pounced upon this picture,
admiring it with my whole heart; as he said with
tears in his eyes, his father's mind had grown weak
as well as his paintings, and he saw no difference in
those later ones ; but the son could not bear strangers
to see them and to judge of him as an artist by these
works of his decadence. All his best pictures are at
Munich. King Ludwig had ennobled him by making
him Consul of Bavaria in his native town, where he
was a sort of patriarch, and stbl almost expected as a
right to receive a visit from distinguished foreigners.
I hope I helped to pass one dull day. by my visit to
the good old man ; whenever he had strength to get
up he was sure to be at his easel.
At last I had to take leave of all my kind friends,
both rich and poor. Signor Pahcarmo (who had never
ceased to take care for my comfort, though himself
generaby invisible) came, and offered to send me down
to the port in his carriage ; but I preferred to walk,
so was accompanied by the dragoon, his led horse, Cicero
with all his children and a large black dog, and another
dragoon mounted on the top of my trunks in a flaming
yebow cart, with pictures on its panels of Archangels,
and St. George killing a terrible dragon for the sake of
a red-haired lady in a yellow frock, short sleeves, and
long gloves : on the back of the cart was St. George
himself riding a blue mule on its hind legs. Of course

vii Girgenti 273
each of my three guards had their long guns, with
which they frightened birds and rabbits on the way.
The views of the city we were leaving were very fine,
but the time of the steamer was uncertain, and we
hurried on to find it not yet in sight when we reached
the port ; but my first friend down there locked up the
trunks and walked me off to his house, where his sister-
in-law received us most kindly. She was a handsome,
well-mannered woman, with six children and three of
her husband's brothers all living in her house. She
gave us luncheon in a bttle room between kitchen and
parlour, opening on to a balcony over the sea, on
Which were a Maltese goat, a turkey, a St. Bernard
dog and its puppies in a cage, and a lot of wool
drying in the sun. Between the passage window and
a window in the opposite house a cord was hung,
on which a basket slid backwards and forwards,
between the signora and her mother and sister who
lived over there. A perpetual conversation was always
going on across the street, the opposite window being
full of heads watching us whbe we ate the food our
signora pressed upon us. It seemed a happy nest of
famibes, the youngest chbd (of about seven months)
could push itself over the floor in a kind of basket-
work crinobne, which gave it plenty of exercise and
yet rendered a fab impossible ; it had the wise look of
prudent intelligence some babies have, as if it knew
better than you, and if it chose could set you right,
only it wouldn't.
I sang, whistled, and did my best to be entertaining
in return for so much hospitality, but it was hard
work to keep it up for four long hours, and I was very
thankful when Signor Agostino came at last to take
T

274 Recollections of a Happy Life chap, vii
us on board the steamer, giving the captain particular
directions to take care of us. He told us to go to the
H6tel d' Itaba in Syracuse, and so we did. We two
were put into a large room with a tbed floor, and a
window at each end, one looking on the court of the
hotel, the other on our neighbour's roofs. The room
seemed to be part of a big barn, with canvas parti
tions only going about eight feet up, leaving the vast
gable of the roof undivided and common to all, so that
if any one in the other divisions wanted anything in
the kitchen, he shouted over our heads, and was
answered in the same way. There was a decided
publicity about our quarters which did not suit
Engbsh tastes, and as none of the doors had inside
bolts, our only way of keeping the rather inquisitive
family of the house out of our room, was by piling
up chairs and tables against the door ; but they were
honest people, ahd we made the best of it all. The
famby did the work themselves, and seemed to expect
to be entertained by us, in return for their trouble.
I did my best to obbge them, though the son-in-law's
habit of strobing about with his hands in his pockets,
spitting over everything, was objectionable.
Tlje old white-haired mother, with her pigtail and
sharp eyes, was always amusing, almost witch-like in her
ways. The groans and moans of our mysterious
neighbour behind the other canvas screen did not
prevent our sleeping, and we were ready to start at
daybreak, with the son of the house for our guide,
alternately smoking cigarettes and singing bits of opera
tunes. We met the landlord at the gate, and he pre
sented each of us with an orange as we passed.

CHAPTEE VIII
SYRACUSE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD  TAORM1NA,
MONTE GENEROSO, AND TRAFOI
1870
We went out over the drawbridges and through the
different gates, all built by that barbarian, Charles V,
out of materials taken from the old Greek wabs and
other classical buildings — on to the mainland (for the
present city of Syracuse merely covers the island part
formerly called Ortygia). Then we crossed the level
and now waste ground, in the midst of which stood
one single rose granite column of the ancient Forum,
whbe some others lay near it. Then past hedges of
cactus, covered with most vicious-looking spines, on
which young Italia told us no good fruit grew (the
almost spineless leaves being the best for bearing, but
less efficient as hedges). At last we reached the
Eoman Amphitheatre, a very perfect oval, with a
-tank in the middle for crocodbes, but like most
Eoman work unpicturesque. A German gentleman
in spectacles joined us there; my instinct told me,
here was a person to fraternise with. I did not
repent; he had only one day to spend in Syracuse,
and wanted to see all he could, but like myself had
been unable to secure the help of the only good guide

276 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
to Syracuse, Salvatore Pobti. I, too, wanted to get a
general idea of the old city, so was delighted to have
an intelligent companion who knew the ground-plan
by heart, and all its histories ; we ascended together
to the Greek theatre from whence one gets the grand
general view of the city ; women were still washing
in the waters of the Nymphseum above it, and the
shining white and gray bmestone about the springs
were a refreshing contrast after the crumbling brown
conglomerate of Girgenti.
The Ear of Dionysius came next, a grand old vault,
in which we tried every description of echo, including
a mere sigh, or the crackbng of a piece of paper. I
heard both at the further end with the greatest dis
tinctness, though at 200 feet distance from the first
sound. The beauty of all the quarries and caves of
Syracuse consists in their grand masses of light and
shade, and the superb vegetation in and around them.
They have everywhere abundant water and shelter from
winds, and what plant could refuse to grow in such a
situation and climate ? These quarries have now been
carefully cultivated for centuries, and the trees are of
a great age and size, while ivy and other creepers have
festooned themselves over the fantastic rocks, in a most
fairy-like way. After a mile or so of Greek catacombs
(which I did not enjoy), we visited the oldest church
in Sicily, St. Marziano, under the church of St. Gio
vanni (itself formed out of an old temple). St. Paul is
said to have preached there once, and the patron saint
is buried beneath it ; the church was most picturesque,
and green with damp, with topsy-turvy Greek capitals
and grotesque bits of Byzantine work built into the walls;
strange and ghostbke old frescoes could be traced on them

viii Syracuse 277
too (when the outer sunshine was so superfluously
bright that spare rays came and illuminated even such
an old vault). It was to me a most attractive study,
and I returned more than once, and tried to paint in
the dark, a hopeless task, finally tore ab my work up,
and got a crick in my neck, much to the delight of
Elizabeth, who " always knowed I would."
We went on to the quarry of the Capucins, and,
descending into it by steps found ourselves in a most
lovely garden of fruit trees, with ivy and figs festoon
ing themselves over the strange rock walls and isolated
masses and obelisks of rock which stood up in the
midst. My German friend had a bottle of wine, and we
shared our luncheon, after which he looked at his watch,
saying gravely he would abow himself ten minutes of
sleep, put a pocket handkerchief over his head, and took
it at once without wasting a minute. I did more, for I
made a sketch ; and after the ten minutes we agreed
to go off together to see the papyrus river. At the
gate we met Pobti coming in, with three grown-up
Prussian students, whom he seemed web tired of, and
left them for awhile to show us some more odd things
tbl they got savage (my German friend carefully
avoiding all contact with his countrymen) ; it was very
hot, but we walked on to the shore in spite of it to
engage a boat for the Cyane. After much German
bargaining we got one for half the price demanded,
and started, then I was told how my friend was
travebing with an Austrian Archduke, who arrived
yesterday from Catania, but found the sea so delightful
that he would not land, ahd had gone on to Malta
instead ; but he (having certain ideas about the interest
of Syracuse) had stayed behind to see it, and was to be

278 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
picked up the next day on the return voyage to
Catania ; so ours are not the only grandees who some
times rush through the world seeing nothing.
We made a false dash to get over the sandbank at
the mouth of the Anapus, and stuck fast, so that the
men had to get into the water and push us off; but
our second attempt was more successful, and we floated
in on the top of the wave, between the banks, and
soon found ourselves amongst the papyrus thickets.
After a whbe the men declared they could go no farther,
but my German knew better, and on we went by dint
of pushing and pubing and great struggling, through
a mesh of tangled weeds of many varieties, which we
pressed down and rowed over, and which started up
again after we had passed, and closed the way behind
us, every leaf resuming its place at once, as if nothing
had happened to disturb its serenity. So we fought
our way to the very end and source of the river, to the
beautiful Cyane, of wondrous blueness and unknown
depth, through which by kneebng in the boat I could
see quantities of great fish, and down to the very bottom *
where the weeds shone out bke emeralds. We tempted
those fish with bread, but they treated it with the
greatest contempt ! They floated grandly past the bits
as they sank, and turned up their noses as they knocked
against them; the natives say these fish are never
caught, and are of quite a different species from those
found lower down the river. I saw one plant of river-
weed springing from a slender stem no thicker than my
finger, which spread and spread as it came upwards for
thirty or forty feet till the top floated on the surface of
the magic pool, covering a square of at least three yards,
a perfect inverted pyramid of greenness. The Cyane

vin Syracuse 279
and its fish seemed both enchanted; the papyrus almost
met over our heads as we pushed our way back, and
the masses of ranunculus, watercresses, and other
weeds, appeared almost thick enough to walk on, but
we were told there was not a bit of standing ground
within a mile of the Cyane. It is all a floating
sponge, and will bear no weight beyond its own;
farther on the yellow iris was full of bloom and sweet
ness, and the Palma-Christi and other wild shrubs
were growing on firm ground.
We landed, and walked across the fields to the two
columns of Jupiter Olympus, on some raised and culti
vated ground, near which Nikias fought his famous
battle against the Syracusans, which seems now to us
who live in the times of such terrible death machines,
to have been much ado about nothing ; Thucydides
stating the Athenian losses to have been fifty men !
We entered our boat again and passed over a series of
swamps, ditches, and treacherous banks, but only ac
quired a little mud in the expedition, and at last we
reached the port, where I said good-bye to a very good
specimen of an Austrian gentleman. I have never
seen him since.
After the first day, Politi took me under his especial
guidance, his old uncle, the Cavaliere of Girgenti,
having begged him to do so. He took me first to the
Duomo, the only perfect temple remaining in Syracuse,
so incorporated now in the present ecclesiastical build
ing that one could not examine it with any enjoy
ment ; but ab the noble old pillars of Minerva are still
embedded in the wabs on each side of the cella, with
arches cut to fit them, all as white as whitewash
could make them. There is a curious old carved

280 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
vase, supported on the backs' of bronze lions, now
used as a font, which was found in the Greek
catacombs. Then we went through the old streets and
marked the same old Moorish designs and patterns
used by the goldsmiths which we had noticed in the
south of Spain years before. I observed many Saracen
ornaments in the carvings of the balconies, and curious
old Norman portals and windows, which were full of
flowers. We passed over the inevitable bridge and
fortifications (only to be avoided by taking a boat),
and came to what used to be called the Bagnio, but
which now is thought to have been a sort of academy,
with a small theatre at the end, and a temple in the
middle. The ground-plan of white marble is quite
perfect, a few bits of pblars and cornice stib strew
the ground ; the rest had been taken to bubd Charles
V.'s grand fortifications, but some fine statues found
here are now safe in the museum.
We wound our way up to the top of the Greek
theatre, tracing the names of the great persons who
had sat there, tracing also • the path of the cascade,
which for a long period did its best to efface all those
inscriptions ; it now goes another way and turns a
pretty mib in a decent and respectable manner,
after leaving the actual Nympheeum (or rather the
cisterns near it, for that fountain was dry) ; only
the maiden-hair fern which hung over it showed
that water must recently have been there. The rocks
all around and over it were covered with niches,
in which inscriptions in honour of great men used
to be hung ; these were probably made of bronze or
of some other metal. Steps are also cut in the solid
rock, leading to the platform above, and constant traffic

viii Syracuse 281
was always going up and down them; we turned up
by the southern road, lined with deeply cut chambers
or tombs, containing niches for urns, and at an angle of
the road we came upon nude figures of men and horses,
cut in relief in the rock ; farther on we reached the
high plain of desert ground, covered with tombs, aque
ducts, and paved roads deeply grooved with the drag
of chariot wheels, which extended even to Epipolse, five
miles off. The modern mothers were washing their
chbdren's clothes in the old Greek aqueducts, letting
their darlings run about meanwhile absolutely naked ;
precisely in the same way the Greek mothers did in
that same place 2000 years before. Large rocks are
scattered about, and they too are hollowed into rooms
and tombs (for I have bttle doubt they were the
habitations of the living as web as of the dead), many
of these have stairs, shelves, doors, and windows, and
are quite as comfortable ' dwelbngs as the places the
natives now inhabit, and much more to my taste than
our own quarters at the hotel.
Then we came to more quarries, deep sunk below
the level of the ground, now turned into the richest
gardens, with grotesque masses of rock standing in
the midst, and almost perpendicular wabs showing in
many places the mark of the chisel, but for which it
would be hard to believe these quarries were not the
work of the giant Nature's convulsions, rather than of the
small atom called man. We saw the so-called tomb
of -Archimedes, then ran home to warm ourselves (for
it was snowing about Etna), but we turned out of our
way to see the famed Fountain of Arethusa. This
classic spot is now surrounded by an iron railing and
riband borders, the very papyrus is taught to grow

282 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
geometrically ; but. I could see the water rushing in
under the stones, and alas ! the salt sea also rushes
in to meet it, so that it is now only good for breed
ing mosquitoes. Turning away we peeped in at a
beautiful old Moorish house with a loggia, and a vine
trained over it, very picturesque and dirty. The
natives promised Politi to clean it up a bit, if I
liked to come and paint there; to have given them
any reason for extra cleanliness would have been a
kind act.
One day Politi took us in a boat, under the rugged
cliffs and amongst the rocks, to the Grotto of Neptune;
such colours in the water, and such queer sponge-like
rocks, but there was too much sweb to beat about in com
fortably, so we landed and climbed up some steps cut in
them, as full of fossb shells as a pudding ought to be
of plums. My guide returned to the town, and we spent
the rest of the day in the Capucin quarry, and were
fed with Japanese medlars which looked like apricots,
and large citrons which were most debcious ; they had
a tiny lemon in the centre, the rest was all a soft peel
which could be cut and eaten bke an apple, and was
of much the same consistency, with, the delicate
flavour a dried citron has ; the fruit is as big as a
child's head. They also gave me great bunches of
violets and of lemon blossom, but at last the cold
drove us home, and we took a boat from the nearest
point; it was quite calm within the shelter of the town.
I could see crowds of sea-anemones, cereus and daisies,
sticking to the rocks and sand under the clear blue
water, corallines too, and many little shells. I was
told that petrified elephants' tusks had been found
among the caves. It was odd that at Syracuse the

viii Syracuse 283
antirrhinums on the walls were all white, while at
Girgenti they were all. red or pink. The pink
gladiolus was very fine, and made a grand bunch
mixed with yebow sage, yellow iris, and buds of the
papyrus. One Sunday morning there was a dull scirocco, so
I took a hobday, and started with Politi on two asses,
for the old fortress of Euryalus upon Epipolse : the
day turned into a glorious one, we went up and ddwn
staircases of rock, saw miles of old uncemented walls,
like those of the Greek Phyle, ab so beautifully
squared, and fitted into one another; the aqueduct
which supplied the Nymphseum comes all the way
from Sortini, eighteen miles of good useful work, which
is stbl in good repair. Masses of marigolds and poppies
quite coloured the landscape, while the corn-fields
were thickly dotted with bright gladiolus.
The castle itself is a grand work, with long under
ground passages cut in the solid rock, wide enough for
three horses abreast to go through, and staircases so
sharply cut that they looked quite new ; also doorways
and a bridge bubt of beautifully-squared stones : there
seemed no end to the staircases and great square tunnels.
Amongst them, gentle-eyed brown cows and their calves
(with most dangerous-looking horns) were ruminating,
whbe their master with his wife and yellow-haired
chbdren lived amongst the ruins, a mile at least from
any other habitation. Politi explained the yebow
hair by the fact that the soldiers and sailors under
Nelson had married amongst the Syracusans, and had
left many half English children behind them; certainly
the father of these children was quite ugly enough for
a "Britisher." We left them the remains of our

284 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
luncheon, and went on farther to the observatory on
the Belvedere hbl, from whence we could see all
Syracuse, with its two bays, the island of Tharpsus,
the cliffs of Hybla, and Etna in the clouds above
Sortini. The whole was like a map highly coloured.
We were beset with small chbdren from the village, to
whom Politi gave small monies not over wisely, as he
caused quite as much discontent as pleasure; but
they were pretty creatures, web washed and dressed
for Sunday; they all accompanied us down the hill, and
saw us remount our donkeys and depart. We rode
past the spot called the Villa of Timoleon ; the present
house hangs against a cliff covered with luxuriant
vegetation, shaded by noble cypress trees, and the
olives round the place are of enormous size.
On our return we went straight to the museum ; it
contains one beautiful marble statue of Venus, headless,
but the form exquisite, the attitude like the Venus dei
Medici at Florence, but it has some additional drapery
and a dolphin to support it. There is a lovely little
bronze head of Medusa, and a fine collection of terra
cotta and other antiques ab arranged in apple-pie
order by Politi, who passes half his life in making
pen and ink sketches of them to sell to visitors. He
has the same untiring industry as his uncle at Girgenti.
Syracuse is not a sweet place in bad weather, and we
had three days' rain ; the nights becoming so cold that
my landlady's young family of chickens were quite
stiff in the morning and three of them dead, which
she brought in to show me. I saw a good deal of the
family during this bad weather. Time was not much
valued in Syracuse, even the postman did not hurry
himself, but paid quite a long visit when he brought

viii Syracuse 285
my letters, and discussed the merits and demerits of
my various sketches. The son-in-law of the house
strolled in, and informed me it was cattivo tempo, so
he had had his wife bled ! On my remonstrating, he
said it was a good thing, he had himseK been bled
five times, and showed me the marks on his arm.
He then brought in his pretty bttle wife with her arm
tied up ; they were neither of them twenty ! Then
there was an old man in a canvas den off our room,
who groaned and moaned fearfully all night, and by
day used to carry on long and most animated theo
logical discussions over our heads with the landlady in
the kitchen ; he was, I believe, the Protestant agent
of some Bible Society, and endeavouredjin that way
to convert the cute old lady.
One day we went to another Latamia, filled with
delicious shrubs, flowers, and fruit, and beyond them a
grand rock hall of giant size, with a flat roof, coloured
quite rose-colour by damp, and by some fungus or
moss ; round the sides were rings cut in the stone,
to fasten the prisoners to (the gardener said), and
holes pierced all over the walls diagonally, either
to act as steps themselves, or to drive iron pegs into
for the same purpose. Looking out of this large cool
grotto on the orange and lemon trees, in the fub blaze
of noonday sun, was a grand sight. We were loaded
with fruit, and the gardener's boy showed a capacity
for consuming oranges, which was startling. I saw
him eat six large ones, one after the other without
stopping, and he seemed none the worse ; he also gave
three to his dog, which devoured them eagerly, peel and
all. The boy said he and his dog could go on eating
them all day long without ever stopping, and I believed

286 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
him, he was such an imp ! He was a kind of human
orange himself, with monkey manners. Acanthus and
giant monkshood were in full beauty, growing rampant
over the rocks here; an elegant trailing aristolochia
with yellow flowers and shiny leaves crept over
the trees, ab uncanny like the boy; but when we
passed out of that place all was sweet and human
again. A real large cabbage-rose was given me for my
nose, and a great bouquet to carry in my hand, of
roses, carnations, heliotrope, geranium, sweet verbena,
jessamine, and all the flowers I loved best, such as we
in England have in July, though in Syracuse it was
not yet Easter time ! There were hoyas and other hot
house plants growing luxuriantly under the shelter of
the rocks ; one large fig had spread its arms over a great
mass of faben cliff, and covered it all up, hugging it
tight like a boa constrictor. This was the largest fig-
tree I ever saw ; but the road-sides were bordered with
figs, and my boy said that when they were ripe every
one picked what they liked. I only wondered they
left any long enough to ripen at ab, as the natives
seem to prefer everything unripe.
We returned early that day, as Politi had promised
to take us to see the- churches prepared for Easter; his
sister, a handsome woman in a long trailing black
dress, came also ; in four churches we saw four
different sets of stucco figures dressed up in front of
the high altar, with candles lighted round them, all
illustrating different scenes of the Crucifixion ; all
these were made by the mechanics of the place for
love, not pay. Every one else was going the same
round of sights, and many of the women had long
black silk cloaks, called mantillas, but quite unlike

viii Syracuse 287
those of Spain ; they were gathered up under the right
arm, which produced prettily-curved folds, such as I
have seen in the drapery of some antique statues.
This costume was extremely becoming, and the head
under the mantilla had often a decidedly Greek pro
file, with the hair growing low upon the forehead;
but I observed that most of the ladies with whom
my companion shook hands, were dressed like herself
in the ordinary Paris fashion.
We went and looked down on the portico of Diana's
Temple, which has lately had a house peeled off from
it, and if some other houses were moved in the same
way, Pobti thought the whole ground -plan of the
temple would be found, with all the pillars very likely
standing in their places, about half their original
height ; but it would cost more money than he was
bkely to raise. We then went to the Natural History
Museum, where we saw all the shells of Sicby, and
many others of great beauty, the queen of all being
the paper nautilus, which is said by the natives to
float on the top of the water, and to put up a large ¦
pair of sabs, but only on full-moon nights ; as that
time did not come during my fortnight's stay, I had
not the chance to see this curious phenomenon. An
English lady had sent a perfect collection of Engbsh
snail-shells, including the great brown one from the
hedges ; there were also many birds and beasts. The
hoopoo is a common bird in Sicby. I have myself
seen both kingfishers and flamingoes ; flying fish and
porcupines are also stbl to be found there.
We mounted to the top of the Duomo by a steep
dark ladder, which led us within touch of the old
Greek capitals of Minerva's Temple, the pillars of

288 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
which are so embedded in the church wall that they
look like pbasters inside and out; how I longed to
extricate these and to throw away the ugly building
which hid them. At the top of the dark ladders we
found the sexton's family living. Twelve fine children
growing up, without ever tumbbng down and breaking
their necks ! They had such a dark dirty hole for
their home, from which another rough ladder took
us to the roof of the Duomo. Truly this was a
nice playground for the twelve chbdren, where we
could sit and listen to a Stabat Mater under our
feet, and breathe the fresh evening air at the same
time ; a few more steps and we came to the bebs,
and to a stbl more magnificent view of sea and
land. The music did not improve by a nearer ap
proach, but we sat a while to watch the people
.coming in and out, walking, talking, and laughing, as
they might have done at an evening party ; it was
nothing more or less than a promenade concert, held
in a temple, heathen or Christian, whichever one liked
to call it, but the former seemed the most fitting, and
the siby little bobs people made when crossing the
nave from one acquaintance to another, looked very
heathen and thoughtless too.
In the evening we all sat on the balcony of the
state-room of the hotel, looking into the street, with
all the house family, and . a nice-looking white-haired
Signor Cannonico. He was very sleek and wide awake,
asked me if I were English, Irish, or Scotch, Catholic,
or Evangelical, and then told the rest of the company
how big London was, how it contained more inhabi
tants than all Sicily, — all to stroke me the right
way; but I could not help thinking how politely

VIII

Syracuse 289

he would have bricked me up alive, if it had suited
his purpose. Presently up came the son-in-law, with
his hands in his pockets, and his cigar in his mouth
as usual, and walked the clerical gentleman off to
another balcony, then came back with the air of
having done me a good deed ! He would not have
me disturbed, and that man came from Piedmont,
and the Piedmontese never knew how to behave !
The old mother said, "Yes, those people were very
clever, but (with many shrugs) you could not expect
them to be web-mannered or like their own Sicilians."
It is odd the jealousy of Southern people towards
Northerners, all the world over the same. At last
candles began to appear in the street, with men attached
to them, and one drum; a red figure with a pan of
bghted charcoal in his hand wandered about and was
ibuminated by the candles ; it represented Jesus, the
Light of the World (the old lady told me, crossing her
self devoutly). Then came mutes, dominoes, and poor
bttle children in wreaths of artificial flowers, crinobnes,
and gbt wings, carrying candles, those were angels !
and they generally required papa and mama on each
side with pockets fub of sugar-plums to push them
on, poor weary little mites ; then came the wooden
Madonna, in whose honour the Itaba's son-in-law's
cap was taken off for the first time since I had known
him, and in that action his hands also came out of his
pockets (where they were usuaby stowed away). Then
came more, priests, and candles, and at last a figure of
the dead Christ in a glass case full of tinsel and arti
ficial flowers with a band of soldiers and a great
crowd; there was more standing still than going on
about the procession, so we saw plenty of it ; when it
u

290 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
was over the family took me back to my room, lit the
candles, and behold ! my landlady's eyes were full of
tears ! that was the strangest thing of all, to my mind.
It seemed to me that the one idea of those in the
procession was to prevent their candles from going out ;
and some of the " angels '' roared, and said they never
had worn shoes before, and "could not go unless
they were carried," generaby gaining their point before
they got out of sight. After a morning at the quarries
on Good Friday, I returned for a quiet afternoon in
the house. The landlady came in for a regular good
gossip with her daughters, and I gave them bits of the
fruit which had been given me in the morning. The
old Protestant neighbour wanted some too, and they
all shouted at each other over the partitions till I was
stunned with the noise. Then I was taken on the roof
to see the red sunset, and was again catechised about
our difference of creed, and was simply not believed
when I said our priests married. The old lady had
such fiery eyes, and white hair plaited into a pigtail
behind. She used to sit in the passage by the window
to have it done, scolding Mariazza all the time. In
the evening there was another procession. We sat
again on the balcony. The old lady treated us to ices
from Etna, — giving her own to Mariazza, — and fibed
my, pockets with beans, roasted almonds, and Indian
corn. They all munched them to kib time. They
had another invention for the same purpose, boiling
and eating the small, wild artichoke, leaf by leaf ; these
are not bigger than the thistle flowers of England.
There was a very popular cake shop opposite: I
watched several papas take their children in and treat
them to goodies made in the shapes of lambs, cocks,

viii . Syracuse 291
etc., the small children always kissing their father's
hands in return.
The second procession was most contemptible. It
seemed quite wicked to make the small, small children
go such a way and get so weary ; they required con
stant sugar-plums to keep them going: but my old lady
was crying again ! On Easter Sunday she became
perfectly uproarious, having a large family gathering,
and lots of good things to eat — they made wonderful
sweetmeats and cakes with cream in them, and some
were made for fun with cotton-wool instead of cream.
When the unfortunate dupes got these into their
mouths they half choked as they pulled out those long
cobs of cotton-wool shaped like maccaroni, and the old
lady laughed tib she cried. She brought me a plate
of good things, senza cotone, to taste.
On Easter Monday Politi took me to see a curious
local custom, beginning, probably, when the figures in
it were cabed Jupiter and Juno ; it was called the
Salutation of the Virgin : two figures of Christ and of
Mary as large as bfe, with arms stretched out, and
heads and hands hung on wire springs, were taken to
two streets on opposite sides of the Duomo, amid an
immense crowd of all sorts of people, and at a given
signal they were carried on the shoulders of two parties
of sabors at a quick run towards one another ; when
they got close together they gave three spasmodic
jumps, and then were carried up the steps into the
Cathedral. It looked very odd to see the great figures
jerked along over the heads of the people, with their
heads and outstretched hands shaking ; they went so
•fast that the drapery was held out by the wind, and
looked quite natural.

292 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
The weather was too unsettled for making country
expeditions, so I took a carriage and drove past Lentini,
over a long, dub plain, and under the cliffs of Hybla
(famous for its honey, which in old days rivalled that
of Hymettus), through mbes of herbs, vineyards, and
fruit-trees. Myrtles, arbutus, lavender, rosemary, lilac,
and white cistus, were still there tempting the bees.
I picked a lovely bouquet as I walked up the hill, a
large party of women helping me. They were fine,
handsome figures, with scanty skirts, bare feet, and
hoes in their hands. There was a festa at Carlentini,
on the brow of the hill, where bands were playing.
All Lentini was going there, and the bright costumes
of the people made the whole road very gay What
a view there was over the feverish lakes and the plain
beyond Lentini, the blue coast even to Taormina, Etna,
and Calabria, and still farther on the dim horizon the
continent of Italy. Then the mass of cactus ; from
the top to the bottom of the near hill nothing but
cactuses with a few large fruit-trees standing out here
and there amongst the cruel, prickly things. Lentini
is said to have been the oldest city in Sicily, in those
early days it was chiefly famous for its potteries and
fevers. Charles V. had built barracks for himself and
his soldiers on the high ground above, to be out of
reach of the bad air always rising from the great
swamp. The lake might now easby be drained, which
would save the lives annually of hundreds ; but to do
this would ruin one grandee who derives a large income
from its fisheries, so swamp and fevers remain to this
day. From Lentini the railway took us quickly to Catania
and unwonted luxury in its capital new hotel. I was

Monte Rosso 293

surprised to see that the neighbourhood was not all
one cinder (as I had been told), but there were tracts
between of most luxuriant vegetation, olives, almonds,
figs, vines, corn, peas, and beans, all growing under the
trees, as well as endless weeds and flowers. The tall
golden feathers of the fennel looked grand against a
setting of dark lava, earth, and rocks. Its long stalks
were used in those parts to beat the children with,
who, my coachman said, only cried " he ! he ! " and ran
away. He imitated them by flogging his horses, then
making faces and crying " he ! he ! " himself. This
man was a great character, a sort of comical ourang-
outang, with soft bewitching eyes. He used to make
his horses gabop up the hills, then stopped them with
a sudden jerk at some garden gate, flung the reins on
their backs, and rushed in to steal a flower for me,
which he tossed in with a grin, then galloped on to
another garden to steal again. He talked of his horses
as if they were human beings. " One of them had no
brains at ab," he said, "he always wanted to go trot,
trot bke a mule ; he could not endure that ; he liked
them to go burr, bke the wind, or in a pace of repose."
But certainly I did not often experience that latter
pace, and we went at a gallop all the way to Nicolosi,
a rise of 2000 feet in twelve miles. The vegetation
by the wayside looked particularly bright against the
dark, tinted lava; but Nicolosi is far above ab that,
and close under the Monte Eosso, which in 1669 sent
down lava enough to bury all Catania, and drive back
the sea itself.
Ourang-outang put us in charge of the local guide,
and we went up to its top. The view was very. curi
ous, with the great stream of lava still bare after 200

294 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
years, and the plain on each side so green and fertile.
Modern Catania was on one side close to the sea's
edge, and the salmon-tinted sands washed down by the
river Simeto on the other. Behind us rose Mongibebo
and its family of little volcanoes round it. The snow
was unusually low that year, and the Casa Inglese,
where travellers usually lodged, still buried beneath it ;
everything was a month later than usual, the spring
only just beginning. The slopes of Monte Eosso were
covered with yellow broom, and quantities of tiny
forget-me-nots were growing amongst the lava; the
flowers; no bigger than a pin's head, gbttering like
turquoises amid their black setting. We wandered
about the smaller craters, filbng and emptying our
boots with the cinders, which no care could keep out ;
and we drove back by way of Tre Castagne, a most
picturesque old town for a foreground to any view of
" The " Mountain with its snow-cap. We also visited
a fine garden on our way back, where roses, camellias,.
apples, and pears were growing side by side ; mesem
bryanthemums were almost as big as the camebias,
and of every gorgeous colour ; but the pansy was the
fashionable flower, and was carefully kept in pots.
Catania is an ugly town, but its shops have many
tempting things in them, especially the amber from
the Simeto. It is of a variety of colours, from bght
yellow-green to deepest red, some is almost black with
a blue bloom like a plum over it. Parts of the theatre
and baths, even the old well and the steps down to it,
had been excavated from under the great lava stream ;
and women who were carrying their water-jars up and
down those steps forgot that they had ever been buried
for 200 years in black lava which ended in cliffs over

Catania 295

the sea, whose waters it seemed to have pushed back.
A lighthouse had been built on the very end of the
old lava-stream, and I spent two days sketching under
it ; and the old pair of people who bved there were
most kind and hospitable, insisting upon giving us
cakes and wine, as well as conversation. They said
they were so debghted to see any people who had
been to Palermo ! their native place, and for their
present position they had the greatest contempt. The
poor old lady had chronic toothache, and gave Catania
the credit for causing it. She showed us some English
men-of-war out in the roads, and told us they were
going to put down a revolution in Greece, and had
already bombarded Messina, which proved that people
in bghthouses don't always read newspapers. How
dub their bfe must be, perpetually feeding on their
own fancies.
The old castle of Acis on the other side of Catania
was a picturesque subject to draw. It seemed to have
been half swallowed up by the lava which surged up
around it, leaving ouly a few bits of the building visible
on the sea side ; beyond it were the Cyclops themselves,
basalt rocks so called standing out alone in the sea,
" little stones " which old Polyphemus is said to have
thrown in his rage after Acis and Galatea. These rocks
are shaped like sugar-loaves, made up of organ pipes,
and capped with gray stone. The sight of them put
Handel's mighty choruses with their ridiculous words
into my head. We climbed up to the top of the
largest island, which was once inhabited, and is now
overgrown with cactus and giant fennel. We saw
many strange shebs, weeds, and corals sticking round
those uncanny rocks. A perfect babel of tongues met

296 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
us on landing again, among a ragged crowd of children
with hands full of such local treasures. I took them
all, and left my guide to divide five francs between
the owners of the tongues and hands, and the rowers
of our boat, and they went off, still jabbering, but
content. As the weather seemed to have really settled itself,
we returned by sea to Syracuse, where I was received
in the harbour by the Italia's son-in-law gesticulating
in one boat, Politi in another, and on the shore by his
whole famby, baby included, and Bernardo with his
carriage, who insisted on driving us round a long way
so as to avoid the hill (which I would so much have
preferred walking across) gaboping the horses merci
lessly over the hard slippery pavements, through streets
so narrow, that one could almost touch the walls on
each side as we went. Politi, his baby, and that cool
individual, the son-in-law, came with us, and we were
soon back in the old house ; but this time in the state
room with the balcony hanging over the street, to
which two dark closets were attached, and some nice
furniture. A pedlar had set up a temporary shop in
the room adjoining, and tried hard to persuade me to
buy some of the antiques he had cobected, but I
told him I would sell my own sketches to him if he
liked,, to pay my travelling expenses, but that I had
no money to spend on such roba.
The next day we drove out of Syracuse at half-past
five, the town clocks pointing to half-past four. It
was a glorious morning, and we soon passed the Viba
Timoleon, driving on through the richest country of
wine, corn, and oil, to Floridia, a neat vblage of one-
or two-storied houses. As we stopped to water the

VIII

Syracuse 297

horses, the carriage was soon surrounded by respectably
dressed persons, ab greeting heartby Don Salvatore as
they cabed Politi, and bringing him handfuls of old
coins to look at. I had a very clean nice baby handed
in to admire and dance, which did not roar at all.
The balconies were all gay with flowers, and we had
pressing invitations to go and rest in many of the
houses, but hastened on to the next vblage, St. Paolo,
through the same rich country. Here we were taken
by Politi to have breakfast with a friend of his who
lived in the one big house of the place ; it looked quite
gigantic among'the one-storied cottages. We were taken
upstairs to a long suite of half empty rooms, with a
sprinkling of tables and chairs amongst them, and
¦nothing could exceed the kind hospitality of the
famby. The old gentleman was a most genial soul,
his son a noted amateur violinist (only all his strings
were broken), but he got into a true musical excite
ment over the respective merits of Vieuxtemps and
Sivori, and we were great friends in no time. He
went to the window-boxes of all the rooms to collect
sweet flowers for me, bringing each separately one at
a time. The mother and two daughters also came in
in their best clothes to assist in looking at us, and
the old man insisted on moving his table, so that I
could see the Cathedral of Syracuse from the place
where I sat to eat my meal of eggs, cold sardines, salad,
oranges, fennel, orange-peel, and cucumber preserved in
syrup — capital stuff ! He insisted on our eating it all
up, then he went and fetched more. The wine made
there was also first-rate, both red and white ; and we
had sbver forks and clean linen. Our host made
us take a supply of his excebent bread away with

298 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
us, as he said truly we should find no more like it ;
also some of his caruba beans after they had been
soaked in honey, which made them taste just like
gingerbread. After admiring all his views we took
leave, promising to return some day, then we went
down to visit the school. I saw there a poor little
fellow entirely without arms, who had been taught to
write with his feet, holding the paper steady with one,
the pen between the toes of the other. The good
people we had just left paid all his education and
supported him.
Great heat came on after leaving St. Paolo, and
thunder clouds cobected over our heads, as we went
through woods of old bex trees, with the pinkest of
cyclamen nestling among their roots. The road
became very steep, and a carriage in front of ours
with one wretched horse had great difficulty in getting
on, stopping every now and then and refusing to move
farther. Our men had to get off and help to push ; then
when they were started one of our own horses tumbled
down, and they had to help us, so our progress was
slow, but not the less entertaining. At last one came
to a valley with quantities of old tombs among the
rocks, the town of Palazzolo above it, and above that
again ab that remains of the old city of Acrse, with a
glorious view down to Syracuse and the sea. A storm
of hail came down as we arrived, real lumps of ice —
such an odd change after the heat ! We met a ragged
boy of eleven or twelve with bare feet, smoking a cigar,
who offered to be our guide; and after the rain we
walked to the old city collecting more boys as we
went, till we had a large following, but they were not
objectionable. Politi, as usual, knew everybody, and

vni Acrce 299
was welcome everywhere. We saw the famous rock
tombs, more delicately finished than those of Syracuse,
and hung all over with large-leaved maiden-hair and
hart's-tongue ferns. The little theatre here was very
perfect, and as usual in a beautiful situation ; the odeon
was also perfect. The Santoni are rude figures, as
large as life, carved in the rock side, and more like
Egyptian than Greek work. They had generally other
smaller figures beside them, but were so much defaced
that they were not easy to make out.
It was pleasant afterwards to rest for awhile on chairs
outside a farm house. The old farmer here brought out
his box of treasures, and sat himseK down on the ground
beside us, with the box between his knees, taking them
out one by one to show me. It was a strange collection
of buttons, donkey shoes, coins, bits of glass, nabs, etc.
I gave him a franc for his coins, but did not deprive
him of the rest. He called them all Antihita dei
Sarasani, for in that country everything not Sicilian,
was Saracen, including myself. The hotel here was very
comfortable, the handsome landlady and her famby
most hospitable and friendly. I was asked to go into
her own parlour, and found a nun and a fat priest
sitting there, who wished to make my acquaintance,
so I did my best to entertain them, and the fat man
asked if it were true that our Queen had turned Eoman
Catholic. He had read it in the papers, and that she
had written to the Pope to tell him so. I did my best to
maintain the character of Her Majesty without insulting
my companion, but was not sorry when Politi came in
and assisted in entertaining the company, and I soon
took an opportunity of escaping, leaving my character
behind me, which I suspect must have been treated

300 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
kindly, as the good lady made me a present of a large
amber bead the next morning as a keepsake. I found
Politi did not quite bke riding to Pantelica and Sortini,
so as discretion was the better part of valour, I decided
to give them up, and to go to Ipsica instead, at which
he looked much relieved. But before leaving Acrse, we
paid a visit to an old Signor Gannonico, who had a
splendid collection of vases, coins, and other treasures
found in the neighbourhood, and one beautifully-finished
head of a bacchante. The whole cobection was very
choice, and the old man never tired of showing them.
Some of the gold and sbver coins were reaby valuable,
he wished to sell the whole, but would not separate
them, though Pobti tried hard to get the best for
his museum. There were also some curious gold orna
ments, earrings with ram's horns or fishes' tails ; and
some intaglios of bttle artistic beauty though cut on
rare stones.
As we were packing ourselves into the carriage to
go away, I was greeted by a little old man with much
heartiness and many blessings, and found it was my old
neighbour from the canvas tent at Syracuse, whom I
had so often heard but never before seen ; he .was
making a peddling progress through the island, selling
his Bibles and enraging the priests ; he squeezed my
hand quite like an old friend. And the landlady's
bttle girl of nine cried, because I would not take her
with me to see England, she said.
We had a lovely drive over an excebent new
road, only meeting two, carriages the whole day; we
passed through beautiful green valleys, along clear
trout streams, bordered by poplars, walnuts, and sweet
may-bushes, with an undergrowth of cistus and other

vm Spaccaforno 301
shrubs, which reminded me of the Holy Land. Noto
is a grand-looking place, a complete city of convents,
on a high hbl surrounded by the richest country I had
seen yet. The caruba trees were enormous, and every
other tree loaded with flowers and fruit. After leaving
the town we descended into the more feverish low
country, and went on for miles over a monotonous
level, tbl we came under the high cliff on which
Spaccaforno is perched, and mounted by steep zigzags
to its top. This town is a sort of Eonda in point of
situation, with a great crack or valley of tombs near
by, which are thought by some people to be of a date
even preceding the Greek invasion.
The hotel was just bke a Spanish posada. Politi
was in despair, nobody seemed inclined to do anything
for us, and everything was covered with the dust of
ages. However, by dint of alternate coaxing and
scolding, they at last found the keys of the rooms ; and
Pobti (a real artist and a gentleman to boot) went
about with his sleeves tucked up, cobecting furniture
and the least objectionable mattresses for us out of all
the dirty rooms. The landlord lounged at the door, his
wife sat herself down and did conversation ; meanwhile
our friend had the room swept, and sprinkled with water,
and finaby (I bebeve) cooked the dinner with his own
hands, bringing it in afterwards, eating it with us, and
pretending he knew nothing of the art of carving that
remarkable old hen, who lay on her back, with all
her legs stuck straight up in the air, in a broken dish.
But the wine was good, and the coffee most excellent
(being sent in from another house), we had stbl a supply
of good bread from San Paolo, so we had no reason
to complain of our food ; and found, as usual, not only

302 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
enough for ourselves, but for old Bernardo the coachman
too, who sat in his usual place behind the door, and got
the dishes after us, handing the last scraps to his boy.
Of course, we had not the least idea who cooked the
dinner, or what was the use of a smab green box and
gridiron under Bernardo's feet in the carriage. We
only knew Don Salvatore as an agreeable friend, who
dined with us with his hat on his head, and a cigar in
his mouth, and had acquaintances among the grandees
everywhere (except at Spaccaforno where there were
none), but he went and rode the high horse over the
Sindaco, and talked of his friend the Prefect of Modica,
and made him send us an official with one eye, who
undertook to find us the best muleteer of the place, and
to ensure our safety; but the said muleteer did not care to
go, and made quite a favour of taking us for 3 0 francs.
Upon this the grand Don crossed himself, over and over
again, at the very idea of such a sum, and offered seven,
talking of me as a perfect dragon of economy. The
old muleteer then pretended to take his earrings out of
his ears at the idea of seven francs, and all the others
jabbered at once, and clasped their hands at me, as if
I were a wooden^idol, and they were going down on
their knees in another moment, which set me laughing,
then they all laughed too, and finally they agreed to take
ten francs, and convey us to Ipsica and back, safely
and comfortably. Such mules ! such saddles ! we had
never seen the bke, they said, and they were right in
that at least.
Female saddles were, of course, unknown ; the
crutches of these were so much embossed with big nails
and heavy embroidery that we could not rest our knees
against them without their becoming speedily reduced to

VIII

Ipsica 303

the consistency of a nutmeg grater ; so we tried riding
in the masculine style ; I did not particularly enjoy it,
but the expedition was worth some trouble. Our party
was a most jolly one, the muleteers sang all the way, a
poor half-witted deaf and dumb lad fobowed us for
company's sake, and was petted by every one ; he
seemed quite in character with all the rest of the wild
scene. It was a hot ride, over many miles of hard road
and rough country, before we reached the famous caves
of Ipsica, a narrow but deep crack of two miles in
length, with a clear stream at the bottom, and the
precipices of both sides honeycombed with caves or
grottoes, one above the other, sometimes as many as five
stories, with holes communicating from one to another,
through which ladders had probably been placed. It
is the fashion to say now that these caves were merely
the receptacles for the dead, but I believe the living
also stowed themselves away in those same holes.
There are no inscriptions, and nothing is known of
their origin. The shepherds, who now live amongst
them, cab them also Saraceni, just as the English a few
years ago called everything foreign " French." Those
shepherds were noble-looking figures, with long flowing
hair on their shoulders, black and white hanging caps,
white woollen shirts, and black breeches, full at the
waistband, black gaiters and sandals ; grand men over
six feet high ; there were plenty of pretty girls too
and old women (also dressed in black and white wool)
washing in the stream, or twirling their distaffs amongst
the black and white sheep and goats, with lambs and
kids following them about as pets ; many puppies and
donkeys also rolling in the sun and dust, and playing in

304 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
the shade of the old grottoes. All were living in much
the same simple way they might have bved in perhaps
before the Flood, and yet wise people pretend these caves
were intended for the dead, not the living. How I
longed to spend a summer there, with Eosa Bonheur for
a companion ; there were such endless pictures for her
hand to paint ; and the people seemed gentle and kind.
We followed down the stream for two or three miles,
through thickets of oleander, yellow iris, dwarf palms,
and gorgeous wild -flowers, the cbffs on either side
always full of caves, and hung with ivy, clematis,
wild fig, mesembryanthemum and antirrhinum, then we
mounted to the level of the high tableland above, and
followed it for the rest of our way home amongst the
caruba, almond, and olive trees, but were not sorry to
find ourselves in Bernardo's carriage again, for one ¦
night's experience did not tempt us to linger longer
than we could help at our inn.
The heat in the carriage was pure enjoyment,
hearing the old driver and his boy shout their wild
songs and chaff the passers-by, with Politi opposite to
interpret into Italian (for I had arrived at that stage
of polyglot which looked upon pure Itaban as an
understandable language) ; the Sicilians talk a wonder
ful tongue, very fast, the prevailing sound being "warrah
warrah wha !" it is an odd gibberish, and sounded still
odder when sung by old Bernardo, who had to be wound
up at intervals by his patron, and set going like a clock,
Then he opened his mouth as wide as it would go, with
his chin in the air, and let the song go out at the full
pitch of his voice, swaying his body round and round,
cracking his whip and whipping the poor horses into
a gallop, nearly knocking his admiring satellite, the boy,

VIII

Catania 305

off the box, and so got through several verses all in a
crescendissimo of excitement and noise, till one feared
he would swing himself off his seat. After which
performance he suddenly stopped with a jerk, and
turned round to take off his cap with a grin to me ;
the man was worth a journey to know, and every one
on the roads did know him, and grinned in anticipation
before his jokes came to them.
We did some shopping at Noto, and bought some
alpine strawberries, but were not allowed to stop there,
it was too feverish ; so we passed on to sleep at Avola,
and were excebently put up for nine francs altogether,
with four more for the horses and Bernardo. Three
hours' drive the next morning took us into Syracuse by
the bridge over the Anapo, whence we steamed back
to Catania, on the calmest of days; the short sea passage
being a great rest after the dusty roads. We went in
close to Agosta, a fortified town on the end of a low
headland, much resembling the present city of Syracuse
in its position.
It seemed homebke to be picked up like live bundles
by the good German director of the hotel on reaching
the harbour of Catania, and taken to our old rooms, to
find luggage and letters all waiting for us. The good
German servants treating us as old friends ; it was
quite gemiithlich ! Ourang-outang said he had been
keeping his carriage for me, wondering I did not come,
and his wonderful double voice, bke Buckstone's, set
me laughing at once; but we only stayed a day, and
then he drove us along the coast by Aci Castello and
the fairy islands to Aci Eeale, with its busy streets,
elaborately-ornamented churches, and richly-cultivated
country. After that we passed over a wide ridge of
x

306 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
black lava and cinder desert; and again over more
garden ground tbl we stopped at Giarra, near to which
on a spur of Etna is the famous chestnut of a hundred
horses, now consisting of seventeen separate and
decayed old trunks, which it requires more faith than
I am blessed with to bebeve ever formed one tree.
The whole coast drive was very lovely.
After passing Giardini, some grand zigzags took us
up 850 feet to Taormina, a most curious old town, in
one of the finest positions of the world. We had
secured the best rooms of the bttle inn, with a balcony
hanging over gardens, and beyond them the precipice
and deep blue sea ; on one side we could see the great
theatre, fitted in between its two rocky crags. The
little house was perfection, and the only other staying
guest a clever Danish artist; we talked a wonderful
language to one another — very different on either side,
but which we both considered to be pure German.
He said people came up constantly from both Catania •
and Messina for a few hours, and went down agam ;
none stayed, yet the place abounded in interest and
beauty, even without the theatre. An artist might
find months of work in the old Saracen and Norman
remains about the town, and the most glorious mountain
and sea views all round, and such colours ! One could
trace the coast to Catania and Syracuse on one side,
and to Messina on the other. The theatre is only ten
minutes' walk from the inn, and is bubt chiefly of
Eoman red brick, with marble facings and pblars, and
now, and then a piece or two of black lava ; it is hung
ab over with flowers and shrubs, euphorbias, scarlet
antirrhinums, and many others ; the steps or seats are
quite covered with greenery and flowers, among which

Taormina 307

were a beautiful white lily or Star of Bethlehem
(prnithogalum) with black centre, bke a gigantic onion,
but smelling sweet as vanbla, and of a creamy wax
like texture, also three different orchids, vetches, wab-
flowers, pink ipomsea, iris, mallows, gladiolus, the
beautiful large quaking grass, acanthus, fennel, thistles,
and many other flowers, all in full bloom.
We had a week of scirocco and clouds, which rather
improved the landscape, and with their lovely pearly
tints balanced the great mass of Mount Etna. The
Dane and I both worked for hours every day at the
theatre, in different corners ; in the evening a local
guide used to come to fetch [my things, and show me
other curious buildings in the town. The cathedral is
made up of bits from the theatre, and the porch is
curiously inlaid with lava. Anywhere else the Saracen
fortifications and strange .old castle would have been a
great attraction. Above it is another old town, Mola,
perched bke an eagle's nest on the crag, a thousand
feet above our heads; it also is fub of Saracen palaces
and towers, and over it peeps the summit of Monte
Venere, godmother to the good wine we had to drink.
A regular specimen of Lord Allcash arrived for one
night, in a Palermo carriage, with mbady, mees, a maid
and man ; they never stopped more than a day any
where, and ab wore blue vebs, terrible hats, and long-
sleeved waterproof cloaks. The Dane and I had
possession of the best rooms of the house, so they
had to go into the attics, and the courier went " hout,"
Elizabeth said, and really it was " out," for he said the
other houses were so uncomfortable that he walked
about the streets ab night! They ab came to the
theatre at ten, in the fub heat, treating the poor old

308 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
custode's long stories with unconcealed contempt, and
followed by a long string of idlers carrying cloaks,
desks, portfolios, umbrellas, etc., and sweeping the
ground with their long trains. They all stared at the
Dane's picture, and never said a word to him, the
same to me, then the young lady sat down with her
back to Etna, and did the whole circle of the theatre
on a very big sheet of paper, then went on farther
and had a tent made of shawls and umbrellas, and
did the other views, working till dark, unmindful of
changing shadows, while her parents sat near and
chaperoned her. The Dane said her work was a
miracle of curious chiaroscuro. Elizabeth told me
they left that night, and were to drive by land ab
the way to Eome, as the sea did not agree with them,
and always in that same carriage ; that they brought all
their food and wine from Catania, for which our land
lord must have loved them ! We were all glad to see
no more of them in those quiet quarters.
The family of the house were so purely Italian,
picturesque, and gentle ; they had no helps, but did the
whole housework themselves. I had a visit one day
from Cavabere Cavabari, the Superintendent of all
Sicilian antiquities, who had been to Ipsica just after
us, also to Pantelica, which he reported still larger and
more curious : even he had to take a good guard of
soldiers with him when he went, and he slept in the ,
guard-house near. He said he had left word with
Politi that I might do the same, whenever I chose to
return there, promising also to make my way easy
to Segeste if ever I found time to return to Palermo.
His kindness came too late, for already the abundant
mosquitoes reminded ipe that May was not the month

viii Rome 309
for Southern Italy. Ebzabeth's constant complaints and
weariness tired me out, so I took the steamer from
Messina to Genoa on the 18th of May, but, finding
that it stopped three days in the harbour of Naples
before going on, I left Elizabeth and the trunks at an
inn, and went on to Eome to see my old friend, Miss
Eaincock, sleeping at the hotel and spending the two
days in wandering about with her.
Ab the fashionable people had long since left Eome,
but the great Council of priests was going on, which
was to declare the infallibility of poor old siby Pio
Nono ; it was a curious sight to see those odd faces,
heads, and costumes cobected from all quarters of the
globe. Some few artists also still lingered in their
studios, whose work I enjoyed seeing in progress ; and
my friend fed me every day as she fed herself. She
lived entirely alone, had been living alone in the
same apartment for twenty years, making enough by
her painting to pay for her riding horses and the
few other luxuries she cared for, having enough inde
pendent fortune to save her painting for money's sake
alone. But she hated the ceremony and conventionabty
of ordinary English middle-class life. A carpenter's
wife used to come in the morning to light fires and
bring water (I will not say tidy the place, for I do not
think such a thing entered the head either of her or
her mistress), then she went to market, bought some
meat and vegetables, stewed it in a crockery pot, and
when done poured off the soup into another crockery
pot with two handles, and brought both in, just as they
were, to put on the table. Miss Eaincock then divided
the provisions into three parts, one for herself and me
to eat then, another was put in a basin in a cupboard,

310 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
to come out cold for supper, the third was given to
the carpenter's wife to take home for herseK. She
then put an old pot fub of good coffee in the hot
ashes, and left the rooms tib the next morning, my
friend saying, " She knew that food was good and
wholesome, but no one ever knew what the trattorias
might send you in to eat ! " All her arrangements
were delightfully primitive, her studio ornamented
with two side saddles and bridles hanging on the
walls, and all sorts of curious " bits " of colour pinned
up against them. She was a terrible rider, and used
to break in all the wbd ponies for one of the Eoman
stable-keepers, for the mere love of the thing ; she
and two other old ladies went years ago by the name
of the " Fates," as they always rode about furiously
after dark. Another of this trio was a famous French
landscape painter.
After my two days' holiday I returned to Naples,
picked up my trunks and Elizabeth, and went on by
steamer to Genoa, from whence I sent her home, and
made my own way up to Monte Generoso for a month's
fresh pure air. I painted the lovely wbd flowers there
continually, and studied the wonderful rolbng clouds
and their shadows over the great plain of Lombardy,
with Milan cathedral shining in the midst of it.
My sister and her husband, J. A. Symonds, joined
me there, and would have taken me on with them
into the Dolomite country, but I had been so long
alone, that constant conversation tired me ; I felt
inclined to sit down and cry after a few hours, and
felt far more alone than before. I was not strong
enough to be good company to anybody yet, so they
left me to sobtude, and I got happier again, and a

viii Trafoi 311
fortnight after walked down with my small bag and
sketch-book to Argenio on the Como Lake, on to
Bebagio, and up the hills to Erba, along another
pretty lake and down again to Lecco, back by steamer
to Como, and home to the Generoso again. That little
excursion freshened me up, and I went on with my
flowers happily tbl Mary Ewart came to see me, and she
soon carried me down again to Como, Milan, and back
over the Stelvio road to Bormio and the Baths of St.
Cattarina, but I got more and more weary, and unable
to keep up with her kindly-meant talk and energy. I
longed to be alone again, and at last ordered an
einspanner' and fled ! She went to Pontresina, I to
Trafoi, the first Austrian post-house on the north side
of the Stelvio.
I stayed here more than six weeks; it was so
deliriously quiet in that old-fashioned wooden house,
with a dear old landlady to pet me, and all good simple
people around. No one ever stopped more than a
night there. Everything was so sweet and fresh in the
meadows and forests close around me. If I wanted
a change I could get into the post and go up to the
snows, and gather quantities of the most lovely alpine
flowers, or else down to the hotter valley below. I
made one great study of rocks and water close to the
house, and learned much in doing it. One day I was
caUed outside the house to see a funny scene. Three
native Indians in costume, with a brown bear (very
footsore) and a monkey in a perambulator, had been
stopped by the Custom-house officers, and told they
were not wanted in Austria ; these latter were looking
very important. The young post-master, in a gaudy
cap, was sitting on the ground feeding the poor bear

312 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
with bread, all the population looking on, while the
Indians were gesticulating with flashing eyes at the
idea of having to remount the terrible pass again and
encounter the cold. It was cruel, but they made them
turn back. I heard the poor bear groaning at his hard
fate, as he cbmbed the weary hard road, and looked
longingly at the tall fir-trees ; what was the use of
claws to him, poor fellow, or his power of hugging
either on that flinty road. ?
The war between France and Prussia had just
broken out, and my friends, the Austrians, thought one
with Italy might very likely fobow, so they looked
with suspicion at even bears without passports properly
vise"d. I saw in some paper that my old friend, Marie
Hibebrand, was leading a party of German nurses,
somewhere attached to the war, and I wrote, in a fit of
weak restlessness, volunteering to help her, and asking
her to answer me to the Frankfort post-office ; I made
up my mind, if she accepted my services, to work with
ab my strength with her ; if not, to say Mashallah !
and go home. I drove to St. Valentin first to get a
good view of the Ortler Spitz over its bleak lake, and
was greeted by a snow-storm, so went on by Schulz
and Davos, straight to Frankfort, where I found no
letter. I stayed three days there, but could hear
nothing. I think it was just as well, for I had barely
enough strength to keep myself going, far less to look
after other invalids. Frankfort was in a great state
of excitement, as the Emperor Napoleon had just
given himself up a prisoner — the whole town was
illuminated, and the Wacht am Mhein was being sung
in every corner, wounded people were coming in in
troops, and being taken to the hospitals in all kinds

In London 313

of clever carriages, soldiers were going off to the war,
yet there was no confusion.
I had no difficulty in finding my way home to the
flat again, and had to learn to make it my home,
though the one person who made home homelike was
gone for ever ; to learn to live without seeing his smile
or hearing his voice was very hard. His poor old
parrot took a fancy to me that first winter, and used
to walk up and down the chimney-piece, and sit on the
banner-screen in front of the fire warming its tab, and
talking in the same confidental tone it did to my
father; but after awhile it found out I was only a
woman, and bked me no more. Friends were most
kind, and tried by their extra gentleness and sympathy
to make me feel less alone. I persisted in my work,
and gave myseK few idle moments for mere useless
sorrowings, and so the long winter came to an end.
My sister lent me her bttle Janet, then not six years
old, and a most entertaining companion. She soon dis
covered that the streets which led past Muber's, and
other toy shops, were the nearest cut to all the places
Aunt Pop wished to go to, and used to guide me as
she liked. I made friends with Ameba B. Edwards
that year, whose bright companionship and varied
interests did me a world of good when she stayed with
me. Her home was near my sister's at Clifton, in the
house of a kind old lady, who treated her bke a
daughter; here she had built herself a luxurious
bbrary, and could write without fear of interruption.
Susan Devrient I also saw much of that year ; she
was ill, and came more than once to my flat for change
of air from Bryanston Street. It was not far to come,
but with me she got entire rest and freedom from

314 Recollections of a Happy Life chap.
worries ; she was a most charming companion and a very
generous woman. Once I remember going to her and
asking her to help a febow-sculptress — Ann Whitney
of Boston, U.S. — whose favourite work, " Old Eome,"
had been shelved at the International Exhibition at
South Kensington in an upper corridor amongst pots
and pans and all sorts of rubbish. Miss Devrient put
on her bonnet at once, went down with me in a
hansom cab, and we walked miles hunting up all the
officials, never resting till the beautiful little statue
had obtained a more deserving 'place. The contrast
between the two women was remarkable, the American
lady being a poetess and a distinguished woman in
many ways. Poor Susan Devrient's life was very soon
over ; I knew her only for two short years.

This Sicilian journey was the first of a series, each
longer and more adventurous than the last ; but the
flat in Victoria Street remained my sister's permanent
home over a period of sixteen years, from the Summer
of 1870 to 1886.
As new interests of many kinds grew up , around
her, her cheerfulness returned. London bfe suited
her, with its many and varied attractions, music especi
ally, and the society of her ever-increasing company of
faithful friends, for she had the happy faculty of keep
ing a tight hold on the affections of all the Older ones,
while adding to their number year by year. Friends
of many kinds, scientific as well as literary, were
attracted to her by her own untiring industry. Friends
came to her in London from the ends of the earth,
who had been her hospitable entertainers in their

In London 3 1 5

distant colonial homes, and to whom she delighted to
give an equally kindly welcome when they landed in
the old country. Chbdren too and young people she
loved, and they were always attracted by her. To
her nephews and nieces " The Flat " was a debghtful
home, always wide open for them, and always interest
ing. To it she came back at varying intervals from
those wonderful journeys, bringing with her numerous
objects rare and strange to cram its not unlimited space.
There were glass-cases containing marvellous stuffed
birds or tropical butterflies, both sadly bable to ruin
from the London climate and London dirt. Pictures,
sketches, photographs by Mrs. Cameron, musical instru
ments of uncertain sound and outlandish form : a big
stuffed albatross swinging from the ceibng in the bttle
dining-room; the tiny Australian bear and stately lyre
bird, the platypus and a venerable horhbbl all crowding
into the drawing-room, with shebs, crystals, and quaint
oriental bronzes — each object not merely bought at a
bric-a-brac shop, but carrying its special associations
and telling its own history ; in the centre of all these
stood the stately bust of our mother, which was so
strikingly bke herself as she grew older.
And how warm and debghtful, in the midst of this
most un-London-bke setting, was the welcome with
which she would come forward to greet her guests,
whether strangers or near of kin ! It was impossible
not to wish sometimes, as the years went on, that she
might be content to bve this pleasant bfe among her
friends, and leave the ends of the earth unvisited — a
remnant of them, at least.
But these were idle wishes, and when the wander
ing mood, " die Eeise Lust," came on her, she had to go.

w/Mm
' . .v.v.