From Pole to Pole

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Paul has also a worthy memorial church in Rome, St. Paul's, which stands
outside the walls. On the way thither we pass a small chapel where, it
is said, Peter and Paul took leave of each other before they went to
suffer martyrdom. On the facade the final words are inscribed. Paul
said: "Peace be with you, thou foundation of the church and shepherd of
Christ's lambs." And Peter: "Go forth in peace, thou preacher of the
gospel, righteous guide to salvation." Paul's tomb is under the high
altar of St. Paul's Church. In the interior of the church we notice
portraits in mosaic of all the Popes from St. Peter to Leo XIII.

Rome is inexhaustible. It has grown up during 2600 years, and each age
has built on the ruins of the preceding. The city is piled up in strata
like a geological deposit. What lies hidden at the bottom is scarcely
known at all; that is from the time of the early kings of Rome. Then
follows the city of the Republic, and upon it the Rome of the Emperors,
the cosmopolitan city, where the Caesars from their palace on the
Palatine stretched their sceptre over all the known world from foggy
Britain and the dark forests of Germany to the burning deserts of
Africa, from the mountains of Spain to Galilee and Judaea. Many stately
remains of this time of greatness are still preserved among the modern
streets and houses. Vandals, Goths, and other barbarians have sacked
Rome, monsters of the Imperial house have devastated the city to wipe
out the remembrance of their predecessors and glorify themselves; but if
Rome was not built in a day, so two thousand years have not sufficed to
blot out its magnificence.

Then follow new strata, the Christian age, the Middle Ages, and modern
times, with their innumerable churches, monasteries, and massive solemn
palaces. Christianity built on the ruins of paganism. Ancient and modern
times are inextricably mixed. Up there on the Capitoline hill rides a
Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, in bronze. Look round, and there on the
farther bank of the Tiber another horseman looks over the eternal city,
the brave champion of young Italy's liberty, Garibaldi. You ride through
a street lined with grand shops in new buildings, and in a couple of
minutes you are at the Forum Romanum, the Roman market-place, the heart
of the world empire, the square for markets, popular assemblies, and
judicial courts, a marble hall in the open air. Over its flags, victors,
accompanied by their comrades in arms and their prisoners, marched up to
the Capitol to sacrifice in the temple of Jupiter, where now only a few
pillars and ruins remain of all the splendour Julius Caesar and Augustus
lavished upon it.

At one time we are like pilgrims in the fine Church of St. Peter; at
another we are strolling under the triumphal arch of Titus, erected in
remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem in the year A.D.
70.

The largest and grandest ruin in Rome is the Colosseum (Plate XXVI.), an
amphitheatre which was built by the two Emperors, Vespasian and Titus,
and which was finished eighty years after the birth of Christ. The
outside walls are nearly 160 feet high. The tiers of benches, which
could accommodate 85,000 spectators, were divided into four blocks, of
which the outermost and highest was set apart for freedmen and slaves
with their women. The tickets were of ivory, and indicated the different
places so clearly that every one could easily find his way in the huge
passages, colonnades, and staircases. The benches were covered with
marble, and many statues of the same material adorned the upper walls of
the amphitheatre. The spectacles were usually held in the daytime, and
to abate the heat of the sun immense silken awnings were stretched over
the arena and the auditorium. When the theatre was full, it presented a
scene of dazzling splendour. In the best places sat senators in
purple-bordered togas, the priests of the various temples, the Vestal
virgins in black veils, warriors in gold-embroidered uniforms. There sat
Roman citizens in white or coloured togas, bareheaded, beardless, and
closely cropped, eagerly talking in a language as euphonious as French
and Italian. All strangers who were staying in Rome were there,
ambassadors from all the known countries of the world, statesmen,
merchants, and travellers from Germany and Gaul, from Syria, Greece, and
Egypt.

A circus or theatre of our day is a toy compared to the Colosseum. The
old Romans were masters in the arrangement of spectacles to satisfy the
rude cravings of the masses. Woods and rocks were set up, in which
bloody contests were fought, and where gladiators hunted lions and
tigers with spears. The immense show-ground could be quickly filled with
water, and on the artificial lake deadly sea battles were fought; and
the bodies of the slain and drowned lying on the bottom were invisible
when the water was dyed red with blood. The arena could be drained at
once by ingenious channels, slaves dragged out the corpses through the
gate of the Goddess of Death, and the theatre was made ready for the
night performance. Then the arena was lighted up with huge torches and
fires, and troops of Christians were crucified in long rows or thrown to
the lions and bears. When a Roman emperor celebrated the thousandth
anniversary of the founding of Rome, two thousand gladiators appeared in
the Colosseum, thirty-two elephants, and numbers of wild animals.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVI. THE COLOSSEUM, ROME.]

Not far from the Colosseum begins one of the oldest and most famous
roads ever trodden by the foot of man--the Appian Way. Here emperors and
generals marched into Rome after successful wars; here their remains
were carried out to be burned on pyres and deposited in urns in
mausoleums and tombs. Here the Christians came out at night in silent
ranks to consign the remains of their co-religionists, torn to pieces in
the arena, to the catacombs of underground Rome. Here also St. Paul made
his entry into Rome, escorted by troops of Christians, as recorded in
the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles; and to-day we find on this
road a small chapel which is called "Whither goest thou?" (_Quo vadis?_)
at the point in the road where Peter saw his vision.

POMPEII

From Rome we go on to Naples, where to the east the regular volcanic
cone of Vesuvius rears itself like a fire-breathing dragon over the bay,
and where towns, villages, and white villas stand as thick on the shore
as beads on a rosary. Our time is short; we drive rapidly through the
lava-paved streets of Naples, and cannot feast our eyes long enough with
the sight of these fine dark men in their motley dirty garments, and
cannot hear enough of their melodious songs in honour of delightful
Naples. Their warm affection for the famous city is quite natural, and
one of their sayings, "See Naples and die," implies that life is
worthless to any one who has not been there.

During our wanderings we come to the National Museum, and there we are
lost to everything outside. There we forget the bustling life of the
streets, the blue bay and the green gardens; for here we are in the
presence of antiquity--an immense collection of artistic objects,
statues, and paintings from Pompeii.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING JOURNEY FROM PARIS TO ALEXANDRIA.]

In the sixth century B.C. Pompeii was founded at the southern
foot of Vesuvius, not far from the shore of the bay. About eighty years
before our era Pompeii came under the rule of Rome, and during the
succeeding 150 years it was changed into a genuine Roman town in all
respects--in style of building, language, trade, and manner of life. A
wall with towers enclosed this collection of streets and houses, and at
night the eight town gates were closed and shut in 20,000 inhabitants.
In its principal square, a place of popular assemblies and festivals,
stood the Temple of Jupiter among porticoes, arcades, and rows of
marble statues. In another square theatres were erected, and there also
stood an old Greek temple.

Many rich and eminent Romans loved Pompeii, and built costly villas in
the town or its beautiful environs. One of these was the famous orator
and author, Cicero, whose villa was situated near the north-eastern town
gate. Again and again he went to Pompeii to rest after the noise and
tumult of Rome, and the last time he is certainly known to have
sojourned there was in the year 44 B.C., shortly after the
murder of the great Caesar.

From the vicinity of Cicero's villa ran north-west the Street of Tombs,
bordered with innumerable monuments like the Appian Way outside Rome.
Some were quite simple, others resembled costly altars and temples, and
all contained urns with the bones and ashes of the dead.

Some streets were lined entirely with shops and stores. Most of the
streets were straight and regular, some broad, others quite small; they
were paved with flags of lava and had raised footpaths. Here and there
stones were laid in a row across the street, whereon foot passengers
could cross over dryshod after the heavy torrential rains, which then,
as now, repeatedly converted these lanes into rivers and canals.

Pompeii had several bath-houses, luxuriously and comfortably furnished,
built of stone, dark and cool, and very attractive during the warm,
sultry summer. In the _apodyterium_ the visitor took off his clothes,
and then repaired to the various rooms for warm air, warm baths, and
cold baths. The walls in the _frigidarium_ were decorated with paintings
representing shady groves and dark forests; the vaulted roof was painted
blue and strewn with stars, and through a small round opening the
sunlight poured in. The basin itself was therefore like a small forest
pool under the open sky. The bather was thoroughly scraped and shampooed
by the attendants, and last of all smeared with odorous oils.

The houses of wealthy citizens were decorated with exquisite taste and
artistic skill. Towards the streets the houses showed little besides
bare plain walls, for the old Romans did not like the private sanctity
of their homes to be disturbed at all by the noise of the streets and
the inquisitiveness of people on the public roads. So it is still, if
not in Italy and Greece, at any rate over all the Asiatic East. Pomp and
state were only displayed in the interior. There were seen statues and
busts, flourishing flower-beds under open colonnades, and in the midst
of the principal apartment, called the _atrium_, was a marble basin sunk
in the mosaic pavement, and through a quadrangular opening in the roof
above the sun and moon looked in and the rain often mingled its drops
with the jets of the constantly playing fountain. When the master of the
house gave an entertainment, tables were carried in by slaves, and the
guests took their luxurious meal lying on long couches. They ate, and
drank, and jested, listening from time to time to the tones of flutes,
harps, and cymbals, and watched the lithe movements of dancers with eyes
dull and heavy with wine.

Happy days were spent in Pompeii in undisturbed peacefulness. People
enjoyed the treasures of the forests, gardens, and sea, transacted their
business or the duties of their posts, and assembled for discussion in
the Forum, where the columns cast cool shadows over the stone flags. No
one thought of Vesuvius. The volcano was supposed to have become for
ever extinct ages ago. On the ancient lava-streams old trees grew, the
most luscious grapes ripened on the flanks of the mountain, and from
their descendants is pressed out at the present day a wine called
Lachryma Christi. A legend relates that when the Saviour once went up
Vesuvius and stood in mute astonishment at the beautiful landscape
surrounding the Bay of Naples, He also wept from grief over this home of
sin and vanity; and where His tears moistened the ground there grew up a
tendril which has not its like on earth.

The year before the burning of Rome, Pompeii was devastated by a fearful
earthquake. The inhabitants soon took heart again, however, and built up
their town better and more beautiful than ever. Sixteen years passed,
and then the blow came, the most crushing and annihilating blow that
ever befell any town since Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire
from heaven.

The elder Pliny, who left to the world an immortal work, was then in
command of a Roman fleet anchored in the Bay of Naples, and lived with
his family in a place not far from Pompeii. His adopted son, the younger
Pliny, a youth of eighteen, spirited, quick, and talented, was also with
him. Vesuvius broke into eruption on August 24 in the year 79, and in a
few hours Pompeii and two other towns were buried under a downpour of
pumice and ashes, and streams of lava and mud. Among the victims was the
elder Pliny.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVII. POMPEII.

The Forum, with Vesuvius in the distance.]

Several years afterwards, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote to the
younger Pliny and asked him for information about the manner of his
uncle's death. The two letters containing answers to this question are
still extant. Pliny describes how his uncle was suffocated by ashes and
sulphurous vapour on the shore. He had himself seen flames of fire shoot
up out of the crater, which also vomited forth a black cloud spreading
out above like the crown of a pine-tree. He went out with his mother to
the forecourt of the house, but when the ground trembled and the air
became full of ashes they hurried off, followed by a crowd of people.
His mother, who was old, begged him to save himself by rapid flight, but
he would not desert her. And he writes: "I looked round; a thick smoky
darkness rolled threateningly over us from behind; it spread over the
earth like an advancing flood and followed us. 'Let us move to one side
while we can see,' I said,' so that we may not fall down on the road and
be trampled down in the darkness by those behind.' We had scarcely got
out of the crowd when we were involved in darkness, not such as when
there is no moon or the sky is overcast, but such as prevails in a
closed room when the lights are out." And he tells how the fugitives
tied cushions over their heads so as not to be bruised by falling
stones, and how they had repeatedly to shake off the ashes lest they
should be weighed down by them. He was quite composed himself, and
thought that the whole world was passing away.

By this eruption Pompeii was buried under a layer of pumice and ashes 20
feet thick. For a long period of years the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood came hither and digged up with their spades one thing or
another, but then Pompeii sank into the night of oblivion and slumbered
under the earth for fifteen hundred years. At last the town was
discovered again, and excavations were commenced. Country houses,
fields, and clumps of mulberry trees had sprung up on the deep bed of
ashes. Not till fifty years ago did modern investigation take Pompeii
seriously in hand, and now more than half the town is laid bare.
Strangers can ride unhindered through the streets, look into the shops
and baths, and admire the fine wall-paintings in the palaces of the
great. The columns of Jupiter's temple, so long buried in complete
darkness, are again lighted by the sun, and cast their shadows as of old
over the stone flags of the Forum (Plate XXVII.). The Street of Tombs is
exposed, and young cypresses grow up among the monuments. The dead,
which were already buried when Vesuvius scattered its ashes over them,
listen now to strange footsteps on the road. But the unfortunates who
were buried alive under the shower of ashes have decayed and turned to
dust. And yet they may still be seen in the museums, with distorted
limbs and their faces to the ground. We see them in the position they
assumed when they fell and the ashes were bedded close to their sides.
Thus they remained lying for eighteen hundred years, imbedded as in a
mould. Their bodies returned to the earth, but the empty space remained.
By pouring plaster into these forms, life-like figures of persons have
been reproduced just as they were when death overtook them. Here lies a
woman who fell outside her house and grasped with convulsive fingers a
bag full of gold and silver. Here is a man resting his heavy head on his
elbow, and here a dog which has curled itself up before it was at last
suffocated.

So the sleeping town has wakened to life again, and the dead have
returned from the kingdom of shadows. The excavated pictures,
sculptures, and art treasures of Pompeii, together with the whole
arrangement of the town, the style of building and the inscriptions,
have thrown an unexpected light on the life of antiquity. We can even
read the passing conceits scribbled on the walls. At one corner a house
is offered for hire from July I--"intending tenants should apply to the
slave Primus." On another a jester advises an acquaintance: "Go and hang
thyself." A citizen writes of a friend: "I have heard with sorrow that
thou art dead--so adieu!" Another wall bears the following warning:
"This is no place for idlers; go away, good-for-nothing." It is curious
to read the names Sodom and Gomorrah, evidently scribbled by a Jew. Low
down on the walls small schoolboys have practised writing the Greek
alphabet, showing that Greek was included in their curriculum. And once
were found written in charcoal, and only partly legible, the words,
"Enjoy the fire, Christian," a scoff at the martyrs who, soaked in tar,
were burned as torches in Nero's gardens.

From Naples we take a steamer for Egypt. After crossing the Bay of
Naples we have to starboard the charming island of Capri. On its
northern side you may swim or row in a shallow boat, under an arch of
rock three feet high, into the Blue Grotto. Inside is a quiet
crystal-clear sheet of water which extends more than 50 yards into the
hill. The roof over its mirror is more than 160 feet high. The only
light comes in through the small entrance. Owing to the reflections of
the sky and water, everything in the grotto is blue, and stalactites
hang like icicles from the roof and walls. If you dip an oar or your
hand into the water it shines white as silver, owing to the reflection
from the sandy bottom. It is possible to enter only in calm weather, or
the boat would be stoved in against the rocky archway.

On a promontory to larboard appear the white houses and olive gardens of
beautiful Sorrento, and then we steer out into the turquoise blue waters
of the Tyrrhenian Sea. To the south the rocky island of Stromboli rises
from the waves with its ever-burning volcano, like a beacon. In the
Straits of Messina we skirt the shores of Sicily and Calabria, which
have so frequently suffered from terrible earthquakes. At last we are
out in the wide, open Mediterranean. Italy sinks below the horizon
behind us, and we steam eastward to Alexandria, the port of the land of
the Pharaohs.

II

AFRICA

GENERAL GORDON

Seldom has the whole civilised world been so convulsed, so overwhelmed
with sorrow, at the death of one man as it was when in January, 1885,
the news flashed along the telegraph wires that Khartum had fallen, and
that Gordon was dead.

Gordon was of Scottish extraction, but was born in one of the suburbs of
London in the year 1833, and as a young lieutenant of engineers heard
the thunders of war below the walls of Sebastopol. As a major of thirty
years of age he commanded the Imperial army in China, and suppressed the
furious insurrection which raged in the provinces around the Blue River.
"The Ever-Victorious Army" would have come to grief without a strong and
practical leader, but in Gordon's hands it soon deserved its name. He
made his plans quickly and clearly, brought his troops with wonderful
rapidity to the most vulnerable points in the enemy's position, and
dealt his blows with crushing force. In a year and a half he had cleared
China of insurgents and restored peace.

After several years of service at home and other wanderings in Eastern
lands, Gordon accepted in 1874 an invitation to enter into the service
of the Khedive of Egypt. The Khedive Ismail was a strong man with
far-reaching projects. He wished to extend his dominion as far as the
great lakes where the Nile takes its rise, and Gordon was to rule over a
province named after the equator.

[Illustration: MAP OF NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA, SHOWING EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.]

Immediately to the south of Cairo begins a plateau which stretches from
north to south through almost the whole continent. In Abyssinia it
attains to a considerable height, and near the equator rises into the
loftiest summits of Africa. These mountains screen off the rain from
Egypt and large areas of the Sudan. The masses of vapour which are
carried over Abyssinia in summer by the monsoon are precipitated as rain
in these mountain tracts, and consequently the wind is dry when it
reaches Nubia and Egypt; while the moisture which rises from the warm
ocean on the east, and is borne north-westwards by the constant
trade-wind, is converted into water during eight months of the year
among the mountains on the equator.

The rain which falls on the mountains of Abyssinia gives rise to the
Atbara and Blue Nile, which produce abundant floods in the Nile during
autumn; and during the rest of the year the White Nile, which comes from
the great lakes on the equator, provides for the irrigation of Egypt.
Thus the country is able to dispense with rain, and innumerable canals
convey water to all parts of the Nile valley. Many kinds of grain are
cultivated--wheat, maize, barley, rice, and durra (a kind of millet);
vegetables, beans, and peas thrive, numerous date palms suck up their
sap from the heavy, sodden silt on the river's banks, and sugar-cane and
cotton are spreading more and more. Seen at a height from a balloon, the
fields, palms, and fruit-trees would appear as a green belt along the
river, while the rest of the country would look yellow and grey, for it
is nothing but a dry, sandy desert.

The Nile, then, is everything to Egypt, the condition of its existence,
its father and mother, the source of the wealth by which the country has
subsisted since the most remote antiquity. Now that we are about to
follow Gordon along the Nile to the equator, we must not forget that we
are passing through an ancient land. The first king of which there are
records lived 3200 years before the Christian era, and the largest of
the Great Pyramids at Ghizeh is 4600 years old (Plate XXVIII.). Its
funeral crypt is cut out of the solid rock, and in it still stands the
red granite sarcophagus of Cheops. Two million three hundred thousand
dressed blocks, each measuring 40 cubic feet, were used in the
construction of this memorial over a perishable king, and the pyramid is
reckoned to be the largest edifice ever built by human hands. The
buildings and works of the present time are nothing compared to it. Only
the Great Wall of China can vie with it, and this is ruined and to a
large extent obliterated, while the pyramid of Cheops still stands,
scorched by the sun, or sharply defined in the moonlight, or dimly
visible as a mysterious apparition in the dark, warm night.

Twelve hundred miles south of the capital of modern Egypt the desert
comes to an end, and the surface is covered by vast marshes and beds of
waving reeds. This is the Sudan, "the Land of the Blacks." At the point
where the White and Blue Niles mingle their waters lay the only town in
the Sudan, Khartum, whither trade-routes converged from all directions,
and where goods changed hands. Here were brought wares which never
failed to find purchasers. The valuable feathers plucked from the
swift-footed ostrich were needed to decorate the hats of European
ladies; the wild elephants, larger and more powerful than their Indian
congeners, were shot or caught in pitfalls in the woods for the sake of
their precious ivory. But the most esteemed of all the wares that passed
through Khartum were slaves--"black ivory," as they were called by their
heartless Arab torturers. Elephants' tusks are heavy, and cannot be
transported on horses or oxen from the depths of the forest, for draught
animals are killed by the sting of the poisonous tsetse fly. Therefore
the tusks had to be carried by men, and when these had finished their
task they were themselves sold into Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. The
forests and deserts were not inexhaustible; ivory and ostrich feathers
might be worked out, but there would always be negroes.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII. THE GREAT PYRAMIDS AT GHIZEH.]

When the Khedive Ismail invited Gordon to enter his service as governor
of the new province not far from the sources of the Nile, Gordon
accepted the post in the hope that he would be able to suppress
slave-trading, or at least to check the hunting of black men and women.
He left Cairo and travelled by the Red Sea to Suakin, rode to Berber on
the Nile, and was received with much pomp and ceremony by the
Governor-General at Khartum. Here he heard that the Nile was navigable
for 900 miles southwards, and therefore he could continue his journey
without delay.

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