J. Ewing Ritchie

“ It is dark and stifling, swarming with people and camels and asses, and noisy beyond description. A sort of Rag Fair, only with a few touches of the East, such as a veiled woman, or a stately Turk in turban and flowing robes, or a black-coated, black-bearded Greek priest, or a low row of shopkeepers, sitting patiently in their dark and tiny shops, thrown in. You must keep moving, or you will be run over by a donkey or a camel, for, as the country round Jerusalem grows nothing, the necessaries of life have all to be brought from a distance. ”

“ It was a delight to live when I was there, and as I took my breakfast al fresco in the beautiful grounds of the Hôtel du Nil, with tropical plants in full flower all round me, a bright sun and unclouded blue sky above, the question whether life was worth living seemed to me an absurdity. But, alas! no one can look for perfect happiness—at any rate, on earth. In Cairo there are the flies, not so bad as I have seen them in Australia or America, but a terrible infliction nevertheless. ”

“ Hardly can you enjoy a more magnificent prospect, embracing the fair valley of the Rhone, the white houses of Marseilles stretching up the plain, the gray mountains of Spain in the far distance, the dazzling blue of the Gulf of Lyons, the dark towers of the fort, with the rocky, picturesque islands, with the Château d’If, whence, according to Dumas, Monte Cristo made his marvellous escape, beyond. In the city itself, on a hill, whence you have also a fine view, is a grand new cathedral of imposing form and structure. ”

“ Climb one of these hills, and you look down on the gray, stony city, surrounded by a high wall, over which rise minarets, and mosques, and church spires in wild confusion. There is nothing to charm the eye there. Enter through one of the gates, and you are still more disappointed. You wander in hopeless confusion, shut in on all sides by lofty buildings, with no windows to speak of, only here and there a door; or you plunge into a street with a dark awning, which serves as a bazaar, with shops of all kinds around, where so dense is the crowd that it is with difficulty you make your way. ”

“ From Marseilles to Dijon the country is interesting, giving fine views of the valley of the Loire and hills and mountains far away. From thence to Paris the ride is uninteresting. I suppose a great many people stop at Dijon, as it abounds in magnificent hotels, all of which seem to flourish. I put up at the Hôtel de Jura, close to the railway-station, and I feel as proud as a lord as I enjoy the luxury of that well-appointed hotel. My bedroom is delicious, very unlike that of an English hotel. Everyone in the house seems smiling and civil. ”

“ At the time of my visit there stretched across the bay quite an imposing display of ironclads of all nations—American, English, Italian, French—and it made me shudder to think of them bombarding this scene of life and gaiety and spreading terror amongst its hard-working people. A tramway runs along the whole front of the city for about a couple of miles, and, as you stand thinking of the wonders of modern civilization, you hear a bell tinkle, and see half a dozen camels laden with sacks of grain striding past, generally led by a man on a donkey. ”

“ At night you seem a little lonely as you watch the long rows of lamps that glitter along the banks. But by day the picture is reversed: there is busy life everywhere, and so clean and handsome are the buildings that you can scarcely realize that Lyons is planted with silk-mills, and that, in fact, it is the centre of the great silk trade of France. The trees, planted everywhere on the quays, which are used as promenades, make it a very charming residence. ”

“ The one spot in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem which one must visit is Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Christ, the music of whose voice and the lustre of whose life have brightened and bettered all the ages, dark and dreary as many of them have been, ever since. It is difficult to visit such a place alone; it is impossible to visit it in company with a garrulous and credulous crowd. ”

“ It must have been a fairy palace at one time or other, this Hôtel du Nil, with an enchanted garden. In the day it is intolerably hot, but the mornings and evenings are simply perfection. If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this. I feel inclined to pitch my tent here, and for ever bid adieu to my native land. The dinners are all that can be desired, the bedrooms large and lofty, and the servants, who, with the exception of the German waiters, are Soudanese—tall, white-robed, with a girdle round the middle—seem to me to be the best and most attentive in the world. ”

“ I have seen the moon rise in many lands, but never—no, not even under the Southern Cross—a moon so full, so fair, so bright, as that of Judæa, as it throws its silvery light over old walls and peasants’ huts, on hill and dale—I may not say ancient ruins, for all is new outside Jerusalem, and as regards most of the city a similar remark may be made. ”

“ The Hôtel Grand Bretagne, just opposite the palace—and a far finer building to look at—is about as good a hotel as I was ever in. The rooms seem awfully dark as you enter from the glare of the ever-shining sun, but the rooms are lofty, well ventilated, and everywhere you have marble floors and marble columns, and the feeding is good, considering what a parched-up land Greece is, and how dried-up its beef and skinny its poultry. ”

“ And now I am in Marseilles, a clean, handsome, flourishing city, with an enormous population and an enormous trade; and naturally I think of the time—now more than a century ago—when the Marseillais set out for Paris. ‘The notablest of all the moving phenomena of that time,’ writes Carlyle, ‘is that of Barbaroux’s “six hundred Marseillais who know how to die.” A black-browed mass, full of grim fire,’ got together no one knows how—from the forçats, say some. As they march through Lyons, the people shut their shops in fear. ”

“ It is needless to write that no one can go to Naples without paying a visit to Pompeii, if he would get a true idea of a Roman city, with its streets, and shops, and baths, and forum, and temples; and it is as well to read over Bulwer’s ‘Last Days of Pompeii’—that master work of genius, compared with which our present popular novels are poor indeed—and then let the reader spend an entire day, if he can, among the Pompeiian remains, in the museum at Naples, which Garibaldi, when Dictator of Naples, handed over to the people. ”

“ Be that as it may, all steps in Jerusalem are dogged with doubt. You hear a great deal more than you can believe. We tread on ruins and know what they are,—so far we can believe their testimony. Yet the city is full of surpassing interest. ‘After Rome,’ writes Dr. Russell Forbes, in his valuable little work, ‘The Holy City: its Topography, Walls, and Temples,’ ‘there is no city which appeals to the feelings like Jerusalem; the sympathy is deeper and stronger than that of Athens, which we place third on the list. ”

“ For the first time in my life, I realize the fact that the Mediterranean is a lake—calm and blue as the eyes we love. What astonishes me is the absence of life in these waters. All is barren as that dreary sail across the Indian Ocean from Ceylon to West Australia. Really, if it were not for the photographers, who are always at work on board, we should be rather dull. It is really wonderful the number of amateur photographers who have come out in the Midnight Sun, and are daily having recourse to their art ”

“ I think most of my party are getting tired of Jerusalem—even the clergy, of whom we have many. Exertion of any kind is painful on these dusty highways and under this blazing sun. There has been no rain for six months, and the Jews in the synagogue are praying for it daily, and yet it seems as far off as ever. One thing that is really enjoyable is the cool splendour of these cloudless skies by night. ”

“ On every side we are shut in with habitations—stony, bare of windows, built high up, with here and there a shop, but chiefly with a simple door on the ground-floor; and then we dash into the market-place, and apparently it is market-day, and half of the open space is filled with buyers and sellers in many-coloured garments of the East; and down on us come the guides and small pedlars, shrieking, ejaculating, spluttering in broken English, just as Byron tells us the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. ”

“ We have to dine—for man must dine, if possible, once a day—and to Paris we turn for its cooks and cookery. It is there that the art of dining is carried to perfection. ‘Unquiet meals make ill digestions.’ There is no fear of that as I sit down to my well-prepared repast at the handsome buffet attached to the French Northern Railway, and yet there my troubles begin. As a barbarous Englander, I ask why in Paris, the centre, as it deems itself, of civilization and refinement, I am compelled to help myself to salt by putting my knife into the saltcellar. ”

“ As most of us are sitting half asleep in the smoking-room after our mid-day meal, a wailing sound reaches my ears. I rush to the window and see a funeral procession. Someone has died in one of the houses above us, and they are bearing the dead body into the city for burial. About 100 men and women follow, wailing as they go, while on each side of the coffin—a very unsightly structure borne on a rude bier—walk the black-robed priests, evidently of the Greek Church. The sight is not particularly imposing as the procession makes its way, while the world goes on selling and buying much as usual. ”

“ It is a relief to us all to get back into the Dardanelles and sail over the spot where Xerxes built his famous bridge, the narrow strait across which Leander swam nightly to visit his lady-love—a feat performed by our great poet Byron at a later age—and wander in fancy as we again catch sight of the plains of Troy, the spot where the Greek hero Protesilaus first struck the Trojan strand, and thus gave occasion to our Wordsworth to write his immortal poem—a poem that will be read and admired when all the puny poets of the present age are dead and forgotten. ”

“ A small wreath of smoke at the top only suggests a feeble fire within, and down far below the blue Mediterranean sleeps, and gay Naples sparkles, and the great Campagna opens up its vast green solitudes, save where, here and there, a white-stoned villa varies its monotony. Around me animal life exists not. ”

“ A good deal of building is going on outside the city walls. There is no scaffolding, no hodman with bricks and mortar; the solid stone walls seem to grow up in the most hopeless confusion. Of course you see no decent carriages. Around the door of the hotel there is a daily collection of donkeys and horses and carriages, the last all white with dust and of the most rickety character. One would think they would fall to pieces over the bad roads, almost as bad as those of Constantinople ”

“ As the result, Naples has been given up for years to the most abject superstition, and its people have become the most ignorant and demoralized in Europe. But the city is full of life—far more so than is to be found in any other Italian city. Such talking, shouting, and rushing to and fro can hardly be found anywhere else. Nowhere is there more life than is to be seen on the Toledo. ”