perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of
rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some
on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and
some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left
to blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for
the hospital than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures
of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful
costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or
somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old
father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us
if he could have risen. But he didn't.
As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeys
ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.
They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and
this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups,
but really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was the
next thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out to
one's knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around
us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour--more rascality to the
stranger, for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us
mounted the ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a
ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town
of 10,000 inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede,
and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were
necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers
beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked
them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like
"Sekki-yah!" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam
itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always
up to time--they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was
a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the
balconies wherever we went.
Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high
stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and
then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the
house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at
the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, "Now,
that's enough, you know; you go slow hereafter."
But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply said,
"Sekki-yah!" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a comer
suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every
mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a
heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more
consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after
the catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up
and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted
to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and
let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.
It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful
canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh,
new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn
and threadbare home pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island with
only a handful of people in it--25,000--and yet such fine roads do not
exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go,
in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare,
just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters
neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like
Broadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a
new invention--yet here they have been using it in this remote little
isle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is
handsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and
true as a floor--not marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is
fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in
this land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often
plastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone.
Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast
their bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the walls and
make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow
roadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding
through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all
government work.
The bridges are of a single span--a single arch--of cut stone, without a
support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework.
Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and
handsome--and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous
pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads
and streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign
or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it
is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons
and their domiciles, are not clean--but there it stops--the town and the
island are miracles of cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the
irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street,
goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting "Sekki-yah," and singing
"John Brown's Body" in ruinous English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and jawing
and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was nearly
deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his
donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a
quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented
bills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every
vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic
in gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one
muleteer to each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the
shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up
with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet,
and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a
fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in these
Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent
Office reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days
out from the Azores.
CHAPTER VII.
A week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of
seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with
spray--spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with
a white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the
shelter of the lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating
"clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at
night.
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no
thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling
of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.
But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven--then paused
an instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from
a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The
blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of
lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving
world of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to
glittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and
the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and
it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and
see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral
cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on
the ocean. And once out--once where they could see the ship struggling
in the strong grasp of the storm--once where they could hear the shriek
of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic
picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce
fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night
--and a very, very long one.
Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this lovely
morning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in
sight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's family
abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance
could only partly conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had
wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks
flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the
quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a
still more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed
land again!--and to see it was to bring back that motherland that was in
all their thoughts.
Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall
yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in
a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds--the same being according
to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the land."
The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe.
On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is
only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.
At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone
towers--Moorish, we thought--but learned better afterwards. In former
times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their
boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in
and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they
could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The
Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a
sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators.
The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the
changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew wonderfully
cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the
lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained
every eye like a magnet--a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till
she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the
sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was
for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by
and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought,
hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was
beautiful before--she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then
for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home
compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision
of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a
very river of sluggish blood!
We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the
African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked with
granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar,
was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the
head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the
ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book
after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the
existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must
have known it was there, I should think.
In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly
in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by
the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled
parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like
that in one kingdom.
The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by
1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One
side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the
side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep
slant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of
this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar--or rather the town occupies
part of the slant. Everywhere--on hillside, in the precipice, by the
sea, on the heights--everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad
with masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively
picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into
the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of
a "gob" of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat
ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the
strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of
a mile, comes the "Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards
wide, which is free to both parties.
"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied about
the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never
could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more
tired of answering, "I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did
go, and I felt a sense of relief at once--it was forever too late now and
I could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a
prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to
make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid
of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another--a
tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about
it, even in the first place: "That high hill yonder is called the Queen's
Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there
when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she
would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the
fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag
for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up
there."
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the
subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These
galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in
them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six
hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery
guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might
as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the
perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford
superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was
hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and
whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far
away, and a soldier said:
"That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because a queen
of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops
were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot
till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English
hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day,
she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."
On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt
the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was
good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from
the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the
tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes,
and other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said,
and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through
those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an
endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.
While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my
baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to
another party came up and said:
"Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair--"
"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don't
--now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!"
There--I had used strong language after promising I would never do so
again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you
had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa
and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze
and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have
even burst into stronger language than I did.
Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four
years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by
stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so
impossible a project as the taking it by assault--and yet it has been
tried more than once.
The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old
castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town,
with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in
battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock
behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of
exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that
antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman.
Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave
in the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of
the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the
statement.
In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony
coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived
before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be
true--it looks reasonable enough--but as long as those parties can't vote
anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave
likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every
part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any
portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that
the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the
low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was
once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at
Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps--there is plenty there), got closed out
when the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel,
are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock
of Gibraltar--but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting
one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so
uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress
costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed
Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and
veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and
turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and
long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and
Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink--and
Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they
are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years
ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our
pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling
procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of
complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen
or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this
shifting panorama of fashion today.
Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among
us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in
that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who
eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have
any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think
of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of
any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will
serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up
complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally
when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has
been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken
arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your
very teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the
guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes
off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been
festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from
erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at
breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:
"Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's one of
them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say--and there's the ultimate one
alongside of it."
"The ultimate one--that is a good word--but the pillars are not both on
the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a
carelessly written sentence in the guidebook.)
"Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that
way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about
it--just shirks it complete--Gibbons always done that when he got stuck
--but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, be says that they was
both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and
Langomarganbl----"
"Oh, that will do--that's enough. If you have got your hand in for
inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say--let them be
on the same side."
We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the
Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising
idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies
of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch--to
anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly
meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he
wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half hour, and an
"Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship" in the next, the
transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an
invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander
in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the
Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.
The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright,
not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects
the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the
"Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to
"Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal
they pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet
long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000
feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He
repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes.
Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old
pilgrim made:
"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable--singular tunnel altogether--stands
up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it
sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!"
Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers
them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He
told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock
Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!
At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure
excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of
white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish
town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than
that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over
these sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny
land. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.
We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat
(a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear.
The whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening
attitude--yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and
counter-marched within the rampart, in full view--yet notwithstanding
even this, we never flinched.
I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the
garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben
Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to
help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and
he was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was
evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like
reputation.
Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes
itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the
great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and
contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at
nine o'clock were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the
Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United
States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club
House to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare;
and they told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of
Justice and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very
moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid
gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the
store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she
said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched
me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem
rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little.
Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she
said:
"Oh, it is just right!" Yet I knew it was no such thing.
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:
"Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves--but some gentlemen
are so awkward about putting them on."
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on
the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove
from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand--and tried to hide
the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to
deserve them or die:
"Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They
are just right for you--your hand is very small--if they tear you need
not pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a
gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it
that only comes with long practice." The whole after-guard of the glove
"fetched away," as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the
knuckles, and nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.
I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise on
the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I
hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the
proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean
when I said cheerfully:
"This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits.
No, never mind, ma'am, never mind; I'll put the other on in the street.
It is warm here."
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill,
and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light
in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from
the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other,
I said to myself with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to
put on kid gloves, don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be
flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the
trouble to do it!"
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:
"Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do."
And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):
"But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid
gloves."
Dan soliloquized after a pause:
"Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long
practice."
"Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he
was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting
on kid gloves; he's had ex--"
"Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in
the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it; that's all."
They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other
alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had
bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together
this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with
broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public
exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take
her in. She did that for us.
Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us
ashore on their backs from the small boats.
CHAPTER VIII.
This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it
--these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well
enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.
Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we
have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always
with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and
so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted
something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign from top to
bottom--foreign from center to circumference--foreign inside and outside
and all around--nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness
--nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun.
And lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing
that ever we have seen save in pictures--and we always mistrusted the
pictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem
exaggerations--they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But
behold, they were not wild enough--they were not fanciful enough--they
have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there
was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save
The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of
humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in
a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the
houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone,
plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no
cornices, whitewashed all over--a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the
doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the
floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored
porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad
bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of
Jewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may
know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the
streets are oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only
two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by
extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?
There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud
of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers
fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the
mountains--born cut-throats--and original, genuine Negroes as black as
Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs--all sorts and
descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed
Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and
crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers
that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff
in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow
slippers, and gun of preposterous length--a mere soldier!--I thought he
was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white
beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long,
cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven
except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after
corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird
costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who
are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can
only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and
never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public.
Here are five thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their
waists, slippers upon their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of
their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across
the middle of it from side to side--the selfsame fashion their Tangier
ancestors have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries.
Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked
alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost
believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and
do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree
comforting.
What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest
and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the
stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet
are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall
that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the
Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first
Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted
castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden
time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where
it stands today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and
sold in the streets of ancient Thebes!
The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have
battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged,
oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling
his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the
Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge
built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the
infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, maybe.
Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships and
loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the
Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood
a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two
thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT
HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN
BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is
a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt
against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and
keep to themselves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it
was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin,
landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus,
the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the
fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called
Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and
carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly
obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work.
They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country
residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the
coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone
now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a
personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an
enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good,
bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that
hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier
country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact
makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not
have kept a journal.
Five days' journey from here--say two hundred miles--are the ruins of an
ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition.
And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to have been
built by an enlightened race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary
shower bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman,
shoemaker, or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and
reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole
block of these pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people
crowd the marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons,
apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden asses, not much
larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is
picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-changers
have their dens close at hand, and all day long are counting bronze coins
and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin
much money nowadays, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five
hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not
very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have
money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said
he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head
of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the
change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling
myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I
care nothing for wealth.
The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs worth a
dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce--so much so that when
poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me
of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry
letters through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and
then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed.
Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two
dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold
pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was
good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave
the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under
him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of
taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on
some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison.
Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a
luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or
later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him--any sort of one will
do--and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich men in
the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and
counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man who
is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so
uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden
his money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's
face with impunity.
CHAPTER IX.
About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here,
came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some
mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately,
the princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe
increase!) when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich
with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion
of the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and
Blucher started to ride into the open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from
our camp followers and a loud "Halt!" from an English gentleman in the
party checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a
profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred
threshold of a Moorish mosque that no amount of purification can ever
make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in
entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town
and stoned; and the time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a
Christian would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a
mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within
and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the fountains, but even
that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish
bystanders.
Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.
The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since
there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient
as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave
to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter
thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and
said:
"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog
of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his
presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the
stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore,
send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to
mend the clock, and let him go as an ass!"
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside
of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners
making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of
civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three
murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up
the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on
them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before
they managed to drive the center.
When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and
nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery
is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the
limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he
don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always
brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince,
without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering
can bring down the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a
cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There
are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in
dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that is
proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father
selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees
her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he
retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her
father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and
reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she
goes to the home of her childhood.
Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand. They
are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine
wives--the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how
many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near
enough--a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter.
Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they
are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a
Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for
the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.
They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages
the world over.
Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a
female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as
soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which
contains the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage.
They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans' comes on
Friday, the Jews' on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on
Sunday. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque
about noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the
door, performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to
the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.
But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the
synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and
religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise.
The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high
distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great
personage. Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for
Mecca. They go part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or
twelve dollars they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They
take with them a quantity of food, and when the commissary department
fails they "skirmish," as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From
the time they leave till they get home again, they never wash, either on
land or sea. They are usually gone from five to seven months, and as
they do not change their clothes during all that time, they are totally
unfit for the drawing room when they get back.
Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the
ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back
he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their
fortunes again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In
order to confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and
possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage
save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But
behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the
Jewish money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough
for him to swear himself through, and then receives it back before the
ship sails out of the harbor!
Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain sends
her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Muslims,
while America and other nations send only a little contemptible tub of a
gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they
see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the
Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a
small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their
representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant
them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish
minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or
not.
Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece
of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars'
indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she
never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats.
They would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are
very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as
something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that
time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a
hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving
them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes
forever now. France had a minister here once who embittered the nation
against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions
of cats (Tangier is full of them) and made a parlor carpet out of their
hides. He made his carpet in circles--first a circle of old gray
tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward the center; then a circle
of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones;
then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece of
assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse his memory
to this day.
When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed that
all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his
center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was
correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many
foreign consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in.
Tangier is clear out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when
people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each
consul's family stays at home chiefly and amuses itself as best it can.
Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary
prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough
of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family
seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over
and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for
two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days
together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old
road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries
have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have literally
nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is
a godsend to them. "O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have
seen in thy face?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of.
I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that
when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate
punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.
I am glad to have seen Tangier--the second-oldest town in the world. But
I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.
We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and
doubtless the _Quaker City_ will sail from that port within the next
forty-eight hours.
CHAPTER X.
We passed the Fourth of July on board the _Quaker City_, in mid-ocean. It
was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day--faultlessly
beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine
that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains
of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly,
brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the
spell of its fascination.
They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean--a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away
from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so
rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle,
that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner
gong and tarried to worship!
He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account
of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's diramic
combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What
should you think?"
"Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went away.
"Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any
chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you
say, Jack?"
"Now, Doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone."
"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as
they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet Lariat
ain't satisfied with them deductions?"
The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.
"'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I didn't expect nothing
out of him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything.
He'll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush
about that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or
anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but
somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out
of him. Why can't a man put his intellect onto things that's some value?
Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient
philosophers was down on poets--"
"Doctor," I said, "you are going to invent authorities now and I'll leave
you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the
luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your
own responsibility; but when you begin to soar--when you begin to support
it with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own
fancy--I lose confidence."
That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of
acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always
persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language
that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a
minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over
half a dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from that time
forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so
tranquilly, blissfully happy!
But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth
of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our
information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent
aloft except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the
ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance.
During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set
to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship's
company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the
asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled "The
Star-Spangled Banner," the choir chased it to cover, and George came in
with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered
it. Nobody mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional
and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable
locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the "Reader," who
rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have
all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said;
and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and
he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so
religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into
court again, with the complaining instruments, and assaulted "Hail
Columbia"; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned
with his dreadful wild-goose stop turned on and the choir won, of course.
A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering
disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was
concerned.
At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with
spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were
washed down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were bad
--execrable almost without exception. In fact, without any exception but
one. Captain Duncan made a good speech; he made the only good speech of
the evening. He said:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--May we all live to a green old age and be
prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne."
It was regarded as a very able effort.
The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous
balls on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even
keel, though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it all
together, it was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth.
Toward nightfall the next evening, we steamed into the great artificial
harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying sunlight gild
its clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues of environing
verdure with a mellow radiance that touched with an added charm the white
villas that flecked the landscape far and near. [Copyright secured
according to law.]
There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the ship.
It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm--we wanted to see France!
Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for the
privilege of using his boat as a bridge--its stern was at our companion
ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed out
into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to walk
over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went away out
there for. He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still he
could not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The
doctor tried him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this
boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't
understand him. Dan said:
"Oh, go to the pier, you old fool--that's where we want to go!"
We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this
foreigner in English--that he had better let us conduct this business in
the French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was.
"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't wish to
interfere. Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French, he
never will find out where we want to go to. That is what I think about
it."
We rebuked him severely for this remark and said we never knew an
ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and
the doctor said:
"There now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he is
going to the hotel. Oh, certainly--we don't know the French language."
This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism
from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of
great steamships and stopped at last at a government building on a stone
pier. It was easy to remember then that the douain was the customhouse
and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French
politeness the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined
to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the
first cafe we came to and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and
waited for orders. The doctor said:
"Avez-vous du vin?"
The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate
distinctness of articulation:
"Avez-vous du--vin!"
The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:
"Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try
her. Madame, avez-vous du vin?--It isn't any use, Doctor--take the
witness."
"Madame, avez-vous du vin--du fromage--pain--pickled pigs' feet--beurre
--des oeufs--du boeuf--horseradish, sauerkraut, hog and hominy--anything,
anything in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!"
She said:
"Bless you, why didn't you speak English before? I don't know anything
about your plagued French!"
The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled the supper, and
we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could. Here
we were in beautiful France--in a vast stone house of quaint
architecture--surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs
--stared at by strangely habited, bearded French people--everything
gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at
last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing
its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel
the happy romance of the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness--and
to think of this skinny veteran intruding with her vile English, at such
a moment, to blow the fair vision to the winds! It was exasperating.
We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the direction every
now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just
exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending
just exactly what they said in reply, but then they always pointed--they
always did that--and we bowed politely and said, "Merci, monsieur," and
so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member anyway. He was
restive under these victories and often asked:
"What did that pirate say?"
"Why, he told us which way to go to find the Grand Casino."
"Yes, but what did he say?"
"Oh, it don't matter what he said--we understood him. These are educated
people--not like that absurd boatman."
"Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that
goes some where--for we've been going around in a circle for an hour.
I've passed this same old drugstore seven times."
We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was not).
It was plain that it would not do to pass that drugstore again, though
--we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following
finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected
member.
A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks of
vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone every house and every
block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a
mile, and all brilliantly lighted--brought us at last to the principal
thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations
of gas burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks
--hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter
everywhere! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote
down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the
place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked
it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get
there, and a great deal of information of similar importance--all for the
benefit of the landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and
began the business of sightseeing immediately. That first night on
French soil was a stirring one. I cannot think of half the places we
went to or what we particularly saw; we had no disposition to examine
carefully into anything at all--we only wanted to glance and go--to move,
keep moving! The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down,
finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted
champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs
nothing of consequence! There were about five hundred people in that
dazzling place, I suppose, though the walls being papered entirely with
mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a
hundred thousand. Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young,
stylishly dressed women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in
couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables and ate fancy
suppers, drank wine, and kept up a chattering din of conversation that
was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end and a large
orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous
comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to
judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended its
chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded!
I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing.