The Innocents Abroad

Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. The Innocents Abroad Wordsworth Classics. The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: Five Novels Leather-bound Classics. Mark Twain - Roughing It. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item? Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Is this feature helpful? Thank you for your feedback. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. See all customer images. Read reviews that mention mark twain innocents abroad holy land middle east years ago green cloth europe and the middle quaker city heritage press george salter horizontals reminiscent illustrator fritz reminiscent of decorative salter illustated sub-topic headings tom sawyer decorative victorian edward wagenknecht victorian bands headings in the margins.

Showing of reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. The terms "Illustrated", "Enhanced" and "Collectors'" promise a wonderful example of bookmaking. The Book Description says that it has been "enhanced to include All illustrations are there. But the original editions of Twain's works had excellent, clever engravings with clear, crisp black lines on white background, and this quality is preserved in many facsimile editions today.

In this IEC edition the illustrations are all apparently photocopied in faint grey line on a lighter grey background, and look like like landscapes seen through a fog. In an act of desperation, I printed out half a dozen illustrations from the internet site of the Twain Library of Virginia, and pasted them into the book opposite their printed facsimiles.

The contrast is appalling! This IEC edition is not a facsimile of the original issue. There are occasional disturbing eccentricities, such as in Chapter 26, where an in-text playbill for the Roman Colosseum is suddenly expanded into four pages of empty space and gigantic type, larger than on the Title Page or anywhere else in the book. Other strange eccentricities of typesetting make this look like a book put together by students or amateurs.

To be fair, the one truly original feature of the IEC edition is a three-page Appendix I describing the "Quaker City", the paddle-wheel steamboat that took Twain and his companions on their five-month Odyssey. The five illustrations of it when a passenger ship and when a U. Navy warship, are fascinating. Appendix I is the only thing that I will save when I discard this edition.

Twain's ability as a writer might just be "off-scale", too. I have seen estimates of Goethe's and Shakespeare's IQs which are at the top end of all humanity's and I'm quite sure Mark Tw When you read Twain you realize he is head and shoulders above other authors, even really good authors. I have seen estimates of Goethe's and Shakespeare's IQs which are at the top end of all humanity's and I'm quite sure Mark Twain is at least their equal, intellectually.

Thank god for Mark Twain, accessible to the common man, and more fun than a barrel of monkeys. And then I would go back to reading and laughing out loud because Twain is so very, very wry. It's too bad you can't bottle what Twain has to say, because if you could, you'd be drunker than a Indians dancing in a cornfield on the first sip. Oct 09, Derek rated it it was ok Shelves: And that may even be a generous assessment. The humor is actually laugh-out-loud humor - and I rarely LOL while reading - but the tedium It became more and more of a trudge.

Jun 12, Maggie rated it liked it Shelves: This is one of those books which I think time has not been kind to. All of the information was interesting, the little stories were a mixture of merely amusing, hysterically funny, and over-the-top annoying, and then there were the chapters which were absolutely fabulous--so well written and beautiful that I begged for an entire book of that kind of writing. Part of the problem here is that the world has become so politically correct that all the members of my book club agreed that we cringed at This is one of those books which I think time has not been kind to.

Part of the problem here is that the world has become so politically correct that all the members of my book club agreed that we cringed at the frequent places where Twain was unkind, cruel, and usually very, very wrong about the people in the area. The Portugese, Carthegenians, and Syrians are only a few which he castigated.

As a group we agreed that Twain's opinions were probably the mainstream opinions of most Americans of the time. There are many worthwhile chapters in the book, but it should be read with the knowledge that a 19th Century man is writing it to a 21st Century audience. I have no doubt that it is a travel book because that is exactly how Mark Twain described it. It is, however, much more than a travel book. His descriptions of fellow passengers and people they met were both colorful and humorous. As an American expatriate in Europe I can see and enjoy both sides of his described confrontations.

This volume of prose also affords the reader a rare glimpse at the true Samuel Clements. His tour of the Holy Lands, though occasionally a little long winded, is full of geographical, historical and theological facts. He points to and points out flaws in all and humorously presents logical assumptions and deductions.

I have come to expect much from this reputed American author and have not been disappointed. It is a lesser known masterpiece but masterpiece no less. I recommend it to everyone. Jun 03, Marc Weitz rated it did not like it. I found myself anxious to read this book expecting to enjoy the application of Mark Twain's wit to traveling abroad in Europe in The wit was there but hidden away amongst loads and loads of boring descriptions and events. Reading this book was like watching soccer: So much so, that when the funny or interesting parts came up, I found that I would miss the beginning because I had zoned out.

This I found myself anxious to read this book expecting to enjoy the application of Mark Twain's wit to traveling abroad in Europe in This book is about Mark Twain's trip to Europe in aboard a cruise ship. Surprisingly, this is one of Mark Twain's early works. A travelogue is usually the type of book written by an established author, whom the reader anticipates hearing their perspective on traveling based on being a fan of their fiction. I'll start with the goods parts: First there are some very funny parts.

Mark Twain does a great job making fun of the places he goes to and dealing with the constant cultural differences and people trying to sell them goods they don't need. Also, it interesting to read that travel years ago wasn't all that different. Some of the conversations and complaints Mark Twain has with his traveling companions sound amazingly like those I have today with my friends. I viewed this period as a golden age of travel, but, for example, shops in Paris put up signs saying that they speak English, when they didn't, only to lure tourists in to buy goods.

And wherever Twain goes, he is hounded by men offering to be his guide. So boring that I felt like I was reading a text book. Long, long, long descriptions of the places they visited that I could care less about. This was before photography really took off, so these long descriptions were for the benefit of the reader.

It's also ironic that at the end is Mark Twain's famous quote "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness I finished reading this book with the impression that everyone and everything abroad just sucks, except for a few pretty churches here and there. Skip this boring book. View all 4 comments. As I made my way through the pages of this book, I became more and more concerned.

I reached about halfway, and we were still in France, having departed New York, visited the Azores, Gibraltar, Spain and undertaken a sidetrip to Tangier. As I reached the three quarter mark, and we were in Venice. I returned to the title pages, scouring for a clue as to my concern. Rechecking the published agenda of the steamship - yes, definitely a trip to the Holy Lands Yes definitely a lot of Europe is list As I made my way through the pages of this book, I became more and more concerned.

Yes definitely a lot of Europe is listed, but, hell we are running out of pages! So despite no indication to suggest this was volume 1 of The Innocents Abroad , it does in fact end as we prepare to leave Pompeii. A little about this edition, which, despite being only half the book, is quite attractive. It is a hardcover edition with an embossed cover and spine, gold leaf on the spine. The embossed pattern is a geometric Art Nouveau pattern, and inside the cover is an amazing peacock artwork, also in Art Nouveau style with a boxed border.

It was excellent, and having read the relevant sections of the full book now, can say the excerpts were very well selected, and it really did pick some of the best writing. As much as I enjoyed this book - and I did - the great writing, the relentless ridiculing of almost anything or anyone, the interesting side-stories, legends and local stories - what I was really looking forward to was the second part of the journey, beyond Europe. Some quick google found a copy of the book I could download, so the second volume beckons, but it is likely to be a slow burner, as I dislike reading from the screen.

Maybe I will print it out Volume 1 - 4 stars. This guffaw-inducing recollection of a pleasure cruise through Europe and the Holy Land made me want to ditch the husband and kids and minivan and become a travel writer. But then I realized that without my husband I don't have money to travel.

And without my kids I don't have a need to leave the country to get a moment's peace. Also, I wouldn't have the freedom Twain had to express my open disdain for foreign cultures and people. Might as well stay home and enjoy Twain's "Roughing It". I hope i This guffaw-inducing recollection of a pleasure cruise through Europe and the Holy Land made me want to ditch the husband and kids and minivan and become a travel writer.

I hope it is as enjoyable as "Innocents". I loved it so much that I am forcing my kids to listen to it and there have been explosions of chortles blasting from the back rows of the van. Just saying the name "Ferguson" can make them all snicker. The reader in this audio book is fantastic.

The cover of the edition that I have is gorgeous by the way. Some of my favorite quotes: Feb 09, Marita rated it it was amazing Shelves: This book was a very pleasant surprise. I've read the usual Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I had never even heard of this book before and read it only because it was the book for my book club. It's taken me quite awhile to finish it, but I am so glad I pushed through and determined to finish it. It is in a very different style than what I went into it expecting it to have.

I think I expected dry, dull, monotonous descriptions of his travels. Not only were his descriptions much more This book was a very pleasant surprise. Not only were his descriptions much more interesting than I pre-judged they would be, the descriptions were peppered with genuine, laugh-out-loud humor. I finished this book last night and have caught myself smiling or giggling to myself as I think about the book today as I go about my work.

One other thing-I don't know anything about Twain's religious upbringing or background. I have always had the impression that he was not a religious or spiritual man.

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However, I was impressed with his seeming knowledge of the Bible, particularly as I was reading his account of the Holy Land. Despite his making fun of a lot of religious practices and traditions that he observed as he traveled, he clearly had a core of Bible knowledge. That surprised me as well. The only thing that could have improved this book for me would be listening to Mark Twain himself read it on audiobook. I can only imagine how much more that would have enhanced the reading experience of this book for me.

In my literary fantasy world, I would love to go to dinner or coffee or both with Mark Twain. I think he would be a fascinating person to know and a fun friend. I can't wait to make my way through all of his books and find what surprises await me there. Jan 01, Bob Foulkes rated it liked it. The Innocents Abroad has been on my bookshelf to read for some time.

I deflected the imperative to read it by giving it to my son, but when he returned it, I decided to dive in. This is one of Twain's famous books. He embarks on a voyage to Europe and the Middle East in Obviously dated and extensively written he could have used a good editor , it is nevertheless worth the time it takes to sit down and enjoy his story. The book was a compilation of letters to a San Francisco newspaper; wel The Innocents Abroad has been on my bookshelf to read for some time.

The book was a compilation of letters to a San Francisco newspaper; well received, he was launched on his career as a writer. Tom Sawyer came nine years later and Huckleberry Finn another nine after that. It is an interesting read, Twain shows much of his capacity for insight and humour and his ability to look at things from an ironic perspective. His talent as a keen observer of mores and foibles of his fellow Americans is particularly fun; he may not be the first to comment on the clumsiness and inappropriateness of American travellers, but he makes good use of their mindless self-absorption for humour.

It is a good book for long rainy winter weather. Take the time, there is a smile or a chuckle on almost every page. In Mark Twain had the opportunity, uncommon at the time, to go on a "pleasure cruise" to Europe and the Holy Land. This book is a collection of the reports he wrote back home during the trip. I haven't read much by Mark Twain, and that was many years ago so I wasn't sure what to expect. Based on this account I am sad to report that he seemed like kind of an asshole.

He went through this amazing adventure apparently determined to find the worst in everyone and everything he saw, and to repor In Mark Twain had the opportunity, uncommon at the time, to go on a "pleasure cruise" to Europe and the Holy Land. He went through this amazing adventure apparently determined to find the worst in everyone and everything he saw, and to report that almost every experience fell short of his expectations.

His descriptions were generally merciless and very, very long. Still, there was a lot to like in this novel and I have to rate this with 5 stars just because it is just SO incredibly cool to have this detailed account of travel years ago. Imagine being in Istanbul then Constantinople when it wasn't a modern city, but instead still full of people in exotic Arabian dress, riding camels and donkeys. Imagine visiting the great Pyramids before King Tut's tomb was even discovered. Imagine being taken to meet the Russian Tzar and his family, simply because travelers from the US were so rare.

Note, I imagine I would enjoy all of these things much more if cranky old Twain wasn't among the party, complaining about everything. Twain is famous for his wit, but for the most part I founds his observations more mean-spirited than funny. But there were three specific scenes that made me laugh so hard I cried; the kind of funny that I know will forever make me start giggling again just thinking about them - I can't help but like a book that gives me that gift. I have been to many of the places he describes, but never to the Holy Land.

He was surprisingly knowledgeable about the Bible, and his descriptions in that section alone was worth putting up with some of the more boring parts. So in short, this book is definitely not for everyone, but for me it was ultimately worth the time. If by some chance my review intrigues you, but you are a person who gets offended easily, I caution that you will be triggered.

He really warmed to this topic and returned to it again and again. To be fair, he was contemptuous of most of the other foreign people that he encountered, especially Muslims - he was really NOT a fan. So anyway, just picking up the novel probably makes you a racist and and an Islamophobe. Also a misogynist because he thought most women of other nationalities were ugly. There was also some distressing animal cruelty. You know what, don't even bother reading it, just start demanding that it be banned. Jul 29, Naftoli rated it really liked it Shelves: This travel log is one of the best books by Twain I have read.

His observations throughout Europe and the Holy Land are hilarious, reflective, multi-layered, derogatory, compassionate, insightful, and at times tediously introspective; in short it looks, feels, and reads like typical Twain. Additionally, the reader sees with a new pair of eyes, that is, a midthcentury American Protestant set of eyes.

But not always, at times Twain demonstrates a citizen-of-the-world worldview before diving bac This travel log is one of the best books by Twain I have read. But not always, at times Twain demonstrates a citizen-of-the-world worldview before diving back into an American one. Keenly self-aware, he even describes his forays into subjectively. This was a time when, according to Twain, most Europeans knew little of America and Americans and those that did looked upon it as a barbarous horde scarcely on the fringe of civilization.

Surely this could not be said today. I especially enjoyed his critiques of tour guides throughout Europe and the Middle East. This often annoyed the guides but the Americans abroad saw it as a payback as the guides invariably fabricated stories and led them on wild goose chases to places they did not want to visit. In the Arab lands the locals were especially vexing due to beggary. Twain found the incessant demands for baksheesh tormenting.

That said, I'm halfway through he's just finished Europe and heading to the Middle East , and so going to take a break before continuing. This is beautifully written - and hysterically funny - stuff, but probably better to spread it out and enjoy it, rather than race to the end like I do with fiction. The Innocents Abroad reads like the best Bill Bryson, except even more politically incorrect and therefore even funnier. It's also surprising how current this is - except for references to things like horses and gaslights, most of this could have been written today; since basically ruins are ruins, and French and Italians are French and Italians, or "macaroni-stuffing organ grinders," as Twain calls them in a particular fit of pique.

Took forever, but this book is just so dense, so rich, so well-written He goes on a bit when he actually gets to describing some of the temples, villages, etc. Overall - and much to my surprise - I'd almost put this up there with Peter Fleming's News From Tartary , which is about the highest praise a humorous travel book can receive! Sep 26, Sherrie rated it it was ok Shelves: Twain "lost me" during the second half of the trip, when the pilgrims head for the Holy Land. Seeing as how I spent 12 years in Catholic school 16 if you count attending a Jesuit university too I found all the Bibleland stuff horribly tedious and not very amusing.

Plus travelling with Twain is not as wonderful as one would think! He is close-minded, comparing everything in Europe to the size of things back in America Lake Tahoe is a reoccurring reference point and is mostly in a bad mood when Twain "lost me" during the second half of the trip, when the pilgrims head for the Holy Land. He is close-minded, comparing everything in Europe to the size of things back in America Lake Tahoe is a reoccurring reference point and is mostly in a bad mood when he discovers that what he has read in guide books is all completely untrue.

He is unmoved by the masterworks of the Renaissance but spends a lot of time talking about the conditions of the roads as they travel. Would you want to be stuck on a cruise ship with a guy who is constantly talking about how big the state of Missouri is? The irony of all of this is - a sentence about travel from this book is often quoted as encouragement to get one to travel: Dec 07, Scott rated it it was amazing Shelves: Could this be the best travel book ever written? It's the best that I've ever read. Twain's wit sparkles throughout. Usually he simply describes what he and his friends are doing.

When he needs to he can wax as eloquently as Frances Mayes. His observations are unsparing, often taking opposing views from the "travel mythology. His trip starts out o Could this be the best travel book ever written? Much of the trip is overland: Much of what he comments about are things that affect tourism today, such has the penchant for his fellow travelers of breaking off pieces of rocks and statues to take home.

Though written in , it's a great book even for today. These are his recollections of his trip taken mainly from his letters and journal. Why I started this book: I've enjoyed Twain's work and his autobiography, and I thought that his travelogue would be a great book to listen to while living abroad myself. Why I finished it: Twain pokes fun, both of his American companions and the people that they meet along their journey.

Written for his 19th century audience, it is filled with lengthy descriptions of the places, the casual racism of the time and some of my favorite Twain quotes that I hadn't realized came from this book. Like the fact that he could never get the French to understand their own language, or that travel is the cure for prejudice. May 31, Natan rated it really liked it Shelves: I read the Hebrew translation, and apparently they only translated the part about the trip in the Holy Land.

When I was little, I used to think about how fun it would be to bring some figure from history back to life and show him today's world. What would impress him the most? How would he react to modern technology? And that was before the Internet Whom would I choose? Anyway, now I have no doubts as to the last question. I would choose Mark Twain and show him around the modern State of Israel I read the Hebrew translation, and apparently they only translated the part about the trip in the Holy Land.

I would choose Mark Twain and show him around the modern State of Israel. I imagine he would find it quite different than the Ottoman backwater he describes Dec 27, Elizabeth rated it really liked it Shelves: The town has eight thousand to ten thousand inhabitants.

Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits — not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that blow there.

These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava walls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards. The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese characteristics about it. But more of that anon. We landed under the walls of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they needed it.

The group on the pier was a rusty one — men and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these vermin surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment excited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back, just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his advertising trip from street to street.

It was very flattering to me to be part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep.

The general style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its capotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to tell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from. The Portuguese pennies, or reis pronounced rays , are prodigious.

It takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on solid land once more that he wanted to give a feast — said he had heard it was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill.

Blucher glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his senses had not deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes:. Go — leave me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined community. I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb.

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Wine glasses descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped unnoticed from nerveless fingers. At last the fearful silence was broken. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language that a Christian could understand — thus:. I think the Azores must be very little known in America. Some of the party, well read concerning most other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that they were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic, something more than halfway between New York and Gibraltar.

These considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts just here. The community is eminently Portuguese — that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands contain a population of about ,, almost entirely Portuguese. Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers did.

They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep.

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When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah.

There is not a wheelbarrow in the land — they carry everything on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in the islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him.

The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and sleep with.

The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported.

But a disease killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges — chiefly to England.

Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was — or at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like that! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer.

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

In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver — at least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred to the ton to speak after the fashion of the silver miners — and before it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died, left money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and night.

She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if it went out altogether. The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the 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 , might have told us if he could have risen. 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.

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, inhabitants. 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. 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.

He turned a corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a heap. 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, — 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. 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, 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. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent Office reports. 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. 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: 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. 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. 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! 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.

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, to 1, 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. 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: 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:.

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:. Have pity on me. 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. 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. 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, or 7, 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.

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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:. Some authors states it that way, and some states it different. 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 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. 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. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was feet high and 1, feet long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2, feet long and 1, feet high running through the hill, from end to end. 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:. 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. 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.

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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:. 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:. There is a grace about it that only comes with long practice. 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:. I like a glove that fits. It is warm here. It was the warmest place I ever was in.

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A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it! 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. A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us ashore on their backs from the small boats.

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. 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. 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. 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!

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.

Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked alike.