A Trip to the Orient Part 21

Monday dawned cloudy with some wind and rain, and although the weather was not stormy, the boat had that uneasy motion which had been felt once before on the Mediterranean. Many of the tourists, believing prevention better than cure, remained in their staterooms, or, snugly wrapped, reclined in their steamer chairs on deck and had luncheon served to them there, fewer than half the seats at the dining table being occupied.

On Tuesday, however, the sea was as smooth as a river. The "Captain's Dinner," which had been postponed from the previous day on account of the weather, was announced for the evening, and the dining room was handsomely decorated with flags, garlands of artificial roses, and additional lights for the special occasion. The depression of Monday was forgotten and the tourists were in a happy humor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FILLED VIALS WITH WATER FROM THE DEAD SEA.]

At the dinner the Captain made a neat speech referring to the pleasant relations during the voyage and the separation which was shortly to take place. The judge, in behalf of the pa.s.sengers, responded in a jovial vein. "Three cheers for the Captain" were given with enthusiasm, followed by "He's a jolly good fellow," heartily sung. Every one arose as the orchestra played "America," and later, when the stars and stripes were dropped from overhead, all rose again to accompany the orchestra in the "Star Spangled Banner." Then the electric lights were turned out and while we sat in darkness, the stewards and waiters, dressed in fantastic costumes of various nations, entered and in a long procession marched around the room, each waiter carrying aloft an illuminated tower of ice-cream, and each steward a dish of bonbons. When the bonbons, containing whistles and fancy caps, were opened, the dignity of judge, professor, and minister was laid aside and the tourists were a joyous, noisy crowd of children.

While we were at dinner the promenade deck was cleared of chairs, decorated with flags, and illuminated with Chinese lanterns in preparation for a masked ball which was to be the crowning and closing event of the day. In this fancy-dress carnival many of the pa.s.sengers appeared dressed in fantastic gowns prepared during the day, or as Orientals in costumes that had been purchased in Eastern cities.

While the maskers and onlookers were enjoying the music and sport, the Moltke was steaming northward through the Strait of Messina. On the right shone the lighthouses of Italy and the lights of the Italian town of Reggio; on the left gleamed the flash-lights of Sicily and long rows of twinkles revealed the location of the large city of Messina.

On rising Wednesday morning we found the sea perfectly smooth with scarcely a ripple to disturb its blue surface. The Moltke was speeding through the waters with an almost imperceptible motion. On our left was the island of Capri, famous for its blue grotto, and the morning sunlight playing on its rugged sh.o.r.es, revealed a white road cut in the rocky cliffs, zigzagging up the side of the hill from the village at the base to the village on the summit. As the steamer coasted the Italian sh.o.r.e, we saw dimly through the mist the bay and town of Salerno, then picturesque Sorrento perched among the rocks, and, in the distance, fog-crowned Mount Vesuvius with a thin column of smoke ascending from the crater, and many towns and villages at its base. Directly ahead of us were the bay of Naples and the city, partially hidden from our sight by a fog. Just before reaching the quarantine station a small steamer crowded with pa.s.sengers emerged from the fog and crossed the course of the Moltke, narrowly escaping destruction.

The Moltke dropped anchor at quarantine and a yellow flag was run to the top of the mast to remain floating there until the Italian physician had completed his examination and was convinced that there were not, and had not been, any cases of plague, cholera, or contagious disease on the ship. During the detention at quarantine a large mail was brought on board. We crowded eagerly into the office inquiring for letters. The stewards, not taking time to distribute the mail in the boxes, called out the addresses, and little thought was given to anything else until letters and papers were obtained and the news from home devoured.

The fog soon rolled away and Naples, beautifully situated on the crescent-shaped sh.o.r.es of the bay, was disclosed to view. From the deck of the steamer we saw a picture unsurpa.s.sed in color and composition by any previously beheld, excepting, perhaps, the view of Constantinople from the Bosporus, or the panorama of Algiers seen from the sea; but each one of the three pictures was unique and beyond comparison. But here, as at Constantinople, distance lent an enchantment to the view; for a closer inspection after landing revealed on the white and yellow and pink buildings ravages of time and unsightly stains of smoke and grime unnoticed from the bay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT DOORWAY OF THE TEMPLE OF HORUS AT EDFU.]

We had no sooner reached the street, ready for sight-seeing, than the cabriolet drivers thronged about, importuning us to ride in the low open carriages that comfortably carry two persons.

"How much to the Cathedral?" we asked one of the drivers, using an expression that we thought the Italian might comprehend.

"One lira the course, one and a half lire the hour," he succeeded in getting us to understand.

"Only ten cents each. And it's fully two miles to the Cathedral!"

exclaimed my companion. "But we have a number of places to visit," he added, "and it will be better to engage the cab by the hour. Show him your watch and make a note of the time."

At the entrance of the Cathedral, the beggars asking alms reminded us of the description of similar scenes at the gate of the Temple in the Savior's time. A blind man standing by the door called loudly upon the pa.s.sers-by to have pity on him, a cripple seated on the steps with rough crooked crutches by his side stretched out his hand for aid, and a fat dirty woman with a tiny babe in her arms whiningly cried, "poveretta mia! poveretta mia!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: I. THE ISLAND OF CAPRI.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: II. VILLAGE AT ITS BASE AND VILLAGE ON ITS SUMMIT.]

The regular services in the Cathedral were over when we entered, but many people were in the building. Some were in silent adoration before the Cross at the magnificent high altar; some were worshiping at the foot of the Virgin, or praying at the shrines of the saints; others were contritely kneeling at the confessional boxes with faces close to the little grated windows, whispering deeds of misdoing to the confessor within and awaiting the father's words of penance or of absolution. We followed a crowd of Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made for a special service. There being no pews or sittings in the chapel, but a few plain chairs for hire, we paid the verger two cents for the use of a chair and waited. Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding a large unlighted candle.

A cardinal in a red robe came down the aisle, accompanied by a surpliced acolyte bearing a cup of oil. As the cardinal pa.s.sed each kneeling person, he dipped his thumb into the oil and then, repeating a formula, made a sign of the cross with his thumb on the worshiper's forehead. A priest in black ca.s.sock and a chorister in white followed the cardinal, the priest wiping the foreheads with a piece of cotton and the chorister taking the candles which were handed to him as offerings to the church.

The doors of the magnificently adorned Cathedral were open to rich and poor alike; but the poor were in the majority, and among them appeared such cases of slovenly poverty as we had not seen elsewhere, not even in Jerusalem or Constantinople, for in the Moslem cities fountains were at the gates of the mosques and no worshiper entered the sacred edifice with soiled hands or feet. Three cases of slovenliness we noted particularly. A woman of middle age, with tangled hair, torn, untidy dress and soiled, stockingless feet partially covered by dilapidated slippers, was violating the rules of the church by sidling up to strangers and stealthily begging within the building; a boy, probably sixteen years of age, hatless, shoeless, coatless, with pantaloons in need of patches and body in need of soap, stood gazing curiously at the ceremony; and a man whose whole attire consisted of a ragged shirt and cotton trousers, with marks of grime on hands, neck, and face, leaned carelessly against a pillar with bare feet thrust forward. But these were extreme and exceptional cases of untidiness, the worshipers generally being neatly clad and careful of their personal appearance.

The military band was playing on a platform when we visited the park and the paths and the gra.s.s plats were filled with people, many standing and a few seated on chairs. Noticing some unoccupied chairs, we sat down to listen to the music and watch the life and movement of a Neapolitan crowd. We had scarcely taken our places when a woman with a badge and a bag approached, demanding ten centessimi for each seat. "Gratia!" she said when paid, and "Gratia!" we responded, grateful for a comfortable resting place.

"I thought, before we started on this trip, that sight-seeing prolonged day after day might become monotonous and that I might lose interest,"

remarked one of the group seated on the chairs, "but, on the contrary, I find continual variety. Our drive through the beautiful residence section and suburbs on the heights this morning was charming, and the extensive landscape and marine view from the Convent of Camaldoli is unsurpa.s.sed, save by the view from Mustapha Superieur. Each place visited has differed so thoroughly from all the others that my interest is as intense now as when we landed at fascinating Funchal."

"In each city I am compelled to replenish my stock of films; I find so many pleasing subjects," replied an artist who always had his camera with him. "Did you see those women on the hillside road at Capri carrying wine kegs on their heads? They posed for me to take a picture of the group. It was not necessary to tell them to look pleasant; every face wore a smile. I am sorry that my kodak does not reproduce colors.

The dresses of the women, though worn and faded, were very picturesque in their combinations of scarlets, blues, and yellows."

"And I regret that cameras cannot reproduce the beautiful azure and silver tints of the interior of the Blue Grotto just as we saw it yesterday," said one of the ladies who was collecting photographs and postal cards. "I want a good picture of the Grotto Azzurra but I cannot find one. Those that are offered for sale are such poor imitations."

After the concert was over, we entered the salt water aquarium of Naples, which is famous throughout Europe as the finest and largest ichthyological collection in the world. In the gla.s.s tanks curious sea fish darted through the water, grotesque sea monsters crawled over the pebbles, and transparent jelly fish floated slowly; pink and white sea anemones, like a bed of flowers, opened and closed, and diminutive sea animals, almost invisible, spread thread-like tentacles; sponges and coral grew upon the rocks, and mollusks showed by their movements that they had life.

One evening we drove to the suburban village of Posilipo and from the cliffs at that place saw the sun descend in glory, a golden ball dropping into a radiant sea. While we were returning, a picturesque beggar with a crooked stick and one string across it trotted alongside our carriage, trying to convince us that he was a musician and his music worth a penny. At dusk, an Italian boy ran alongside the carriage, opened and lit the carriage lamps while the horse was moving at a rapid gait, and asked for payment.

Naples is a city of striking contrasts. It was interesting to study them. We drove over well paved streets, admiring marble palaces, great hotels, and beautiful homes; but with feelings very different from admiration we walked through narrow, filthy thoroughfares, densely populated, where networks of clothes lines with garments of all colors hung overhead. We saw high-spirited horses and superb carriages in the avenues and parks, and teams of handsome cream-colored oxen in the suburbs: but we saw also in the highways, small, rough-coated donkeys overburdened with panniers of fruit; tall, bony horses mismatched with diminutive donkeys; incongruous teams composed of a cow and a donkey, or a large ox and a small cow; and a team even more grotesquely made up of a horse, a cow, and a donkey. We saw the elite of the city elegantly dressed in the latest fashion promenading in the shopping districts; but on the sidewalks of the tenement district we saw slovenly barefooted women washing clothes, cooking maccaroni, scrubbing children in a tub, and combing children's hair with fine combs, regardless of our curious gaze. Here, too, we saw boys, apparently eight or ten years of age, playing in the streets with no other clothing than a shirt reaching to the knees, and women peddlers of mineral water dressed in ragged red blouses and blue skirts, who, with disordered hair and stockingless, slipshod feet, shuffled by pushing hand-carts filled with earthen jugs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEASANT GIRLS THEIR BURDENS BEAR.]

On the avenues street peddlers besought us to purchase canes, matches, coral beads, and souvenirs cut out of lava, but asked prices four or five times their actual value. On the narrow streets dealers in cooked viands for the home trade did an active business at low prices, but did not think it worth while to offer us the hot potatoes, maccaroni, fried fish, and stewed meats which they prepared on little sidewalk stoves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMALFI, WHERE THE WAVES AND MOUNTAINS MEET.]

The trip from Naples to Pompeii was made by rail in less than an hour.

At the gates of the enclosure we each paid an admission fee of two lire, or forty cents, and official guides were a.s.signed to conduct the party through the streets of the excavated city.

"About one hundred and fifty years ago," explained the guide, "a farmer ploughed up some objects of art in this locality. The government, hearing of the discovery, ordered investigation to be made. Removal of the soil disclosed a house and furniture and articles of value. The excavations, carried on irregularly for a century, then continued regularly but slowly for the past fifty years and still in progress, revealed the ancient city that had been smothered in ashes and buried from sight for eighteen hundred years. The wooden roofs, crushed in by the weight above them, had crumbled into dust, but the walls and columns, the altars and statues, the fountains and baths, the paved streets and mosaic pavements, and the frescoes on the walls had been preserved by the covering of ashes, and were in almost as good condition as when deserted by the terror-stricken inhabitants. All articles of value, as soon as found by the excavators, were carried away to the museums and carefully preserved; but the uncovered walls were left exposed to the weather, and, as you will see, are badly damaged and defaced. The government for the past few years, however, has been protecting the newly excavated buildings by enclosing and roofing them over, and in these we shall find the beautiful Pompeian red and blue colors and the dainty frescoes well preserved on the walls."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEARING PANNIERS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES.]

This ancient city of probably only twenty-five thousand inhabitants had improvements that we now designate as modern. The streets, just wide enough for one wagon track with narrow footways on each side, were paved with square flat stones in which the chariots had cut deep wheel ruts.

The public baths had separate rooms for men and women, exercise courts, sweating rooms, furnace heat, hot baths, cold baths, capacious marble plunge tanks, and cooling rooms in which the bathers, cleansed, oiled, and perfumed, could rest after the bath. The water supply was distributed through the city in the same manner as in our own cities.

Lead water pipes conducted the water through streets and into buildings.

Bronze stopc.o.c.ks governed the fountains, and bronze inlets and outlets regulated the supply at the marble baths.

"The Pompeian plumbers used good material and did good work," commented a manufacturer after examining the plumbing.

"If I could produce paints that would endure for centuries, and have them laid on as the Pompeian artists applied them, my fortune would soon be made," remarked another, who had been impressed particularly by the brightness of the red and blue on the walls of the House of Sall.u.s.t.

"But," he added, "the secret of making paint that will endure the ravages of time has been lost."

In a baker's shop we saw four small stone mills in which grain had been converted to flour by hand power, the stones having been revolved by means of long wooden handles. Near the mills was an oven similar to those of the present time.

"In this oven a number of loaves of bread were found," said the guide.

"Yes," answered one of our party, "we saw fourteen loaves in the Museum of Naples yesterday and were told that it was the oldest bread in existence. The loaves were well preserved in form but were as black as charcoal."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADE A PICTURE THAT PLEASED THE ARTIST.]

Our interest in Pompeii was heightened by our previously having visited the Naples Museum, where a mult.i.tude of articles found during the excavations were on exhibition. There we had examined hundreds of objects of art, marble statues, bronze statues, mosaics, vases, frescoes, and paintings; we had seen thousands of ornaments for personal adornment, necklaces, cameos, bracelets, rings, chains, and toilet accessories and had looked at numberless articles for household use, such as stoves, lamps, dishes, and kitchen utensils. Even food was not lacking in the exhibition, being represented by olives in a jar, oil in bottles, charred walnuts, almonds, figs, wheat, and eggs. These things, abandoned by the fugitives in their wild flight, helped us to imagine the taste and manner of living of the Pompeians before the destruction of their city.

"This is the Amphitheatre," said the guide, as we a.s.sembled around him in the arena of a large structure. "Here fights between wild beasts, gladiatorial combats, and other great spectacles took place. Underneath the seats on one side are the dens where the lions and tigers were kept in a starving condition to make them ferocious, and underneath on the other side are the dungeons where prisoners were confined until forced into the arena to meet the wild beasts. On the hill nearby are the barracks where the gladiators lived and trained for combats." An announcement of an oldtime entertainment remains inscribed on one of the stone walls. It reads as follows:

Twenty pairs of gladiators, at the expense of Decimus, a priest, and ten pairs of gladiators, at the expense of Lucretius, will fight at Pompeii on the eleventh of April. There will be a complete hunting scene, and the awnings will be spread.

Another inscription on the wall stated:

On the dedication of the baths, at the expense of Maius, there will be a hunt, athletic sports, showering of perfumes, etc., at the Amphitheatre.

"There was also a Tragic Theatre in Pompeii," continued the guide. "It was reserved for dramatic performances. The stone tiers seated an audience of five thousand. The Amphitheatre and the Tragic were open to the sky, but both were provided with awnings that could be spread above the seats to protect the people from the sun."