Ginii<9'Company'Puplishers Class Ql\A2— Book lL4^5. Copyrigte]^'^_ COPyRIGHT DEPOSm Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/undersunnyskiesOObost The Bridge of Sighs, Venice YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES UNDER SUNNY SKIES 1 \ I. ^^ \^^ 1 , 5 > 5 BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1902 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two COHES RSCEIVED JUN. 2 1902 COPyniQHT ENTRY CLASS C^^XXCL No COPY B. THE YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES GEOGRAPHICAL READERS THE WIDE WORLD NORTHERN EUROPE UNDER SUNNY SKIES TOWARD THE RISING SUN (In preparation) STRANGE LANDS NEAR HOME (In preparation) Copyright, 1902, by Perry Mason Company ^ PREFATORT NOTE n^HE volumes of the '^ Youth's Companion'' Series entitled ''The Wide World;' ''Northern Europe ;' " Under Sunny Skies J' " Toward the Rising Sun," and "Strange Lands near Home" provide in interesting and attractive form a supply of reading material for either home or school that is especially suitable for supplementing the formal teaching of geography, "The Wide World" with which the series prop- erly begins, presents vivid scenes from many countries. Each of the succeeding volumes enters into somewhat greater detail on a limited area, which is indicated by the title. The sketches have been prepared by authors whose work needs' no introduction. The sketches included in " Under Sunny Skies " are mainly concerned with the outward aspects of life in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Africa. [V] CONTENTS Page Toledo and Cordova . Louise Chandler Moiilto?i I Granada Louise Chandler Moulton II Chestnut Farms . . . . Olive May Eager . . 19 Mount Vesuvius . . . . E, JV. Rolfe . . . 30 Tuscan Peasants . . . . Grace Ellery Channing 38 The Macaroni Country . Eleajior LL. Patterson 47 The City of St. Mark Sibyl C. Emerton . 55 Young Greeks of To-day . Edith Crosby . . . 67 The Education of Young Turks ': Samuel S. Cox . . 75 Housekeeping in Turkey . Mrs. Lew Wallace . 79 In the Fig Country . . Eleanor LLodgens . 88 From Tangier to Tetuan . An?iie Martifi . : . 99 Across the Desert . . . Joseph Malbrinche 108 KiLIMA-NjARO Thomas Steve?is . . 114 Hungarian Life . . . . Charles L. Brace . 123 Syrian Sweetmeats . . . Eleanor LLodgens . . 132 Pronouncing Vocabulary 1 3'; [vij UNDER SUNNY SKIES TOLEDO AND CORDOVA Imperial Toledo — Toledo of the Romans, of the Goths, of the Moors, of the Christians ! We were full of enthusiasm as we started from Madrid in the early morning to find it. The train seemed nearly empty. We could almost fancy it crawled on for our sakes only; but crawl it did. I suppose that even a snail gets somewhere at last, and at last we came in sight of Toledo, towering up from the yellow Tagus, yellower even than the Tiber at Rome. The Tagus girdles the town, leaving only one landward approach, which is fortified by Moorish towers and walls. Like Rome, Toledo stands upon seven hills, and like Rome, everything about it is venerable. No mushroom place this, built in hot haste, as solace for a monarch's gout. All here is substan- tial and ancient. Under Sunny Skies For three hundred and fifty years the Moors held sway in Toledo, and you see Moorish remains at every step. It was the Moors who built the noble gates, of which the finest is the Puerta del Sol, in the picture of which you will note the horseshoe-shaped arches which distin- guish Moorish architecture. Externally, nothing could be more imposing than Toledo, but when fairly into it, one realizes that all is desolate, forsaken, going to decay. It once had two hundred thousand inhabitants; it has twenty thousand to-day. But how fascinating it is, even now! The narrow, ill-paved streets wind up and down and in and out, and lead you from wonder to wonder of interest and of beauty. The carving of the stalls in the cathedral choir is so beautiful that I should like to study it every day for a year, and the stained-glass windows are among the finest in the world. They sparkle as with jewels, and throw their party-colored reflec- tions on the eighty-eight columns which uplift the gorgeous ceiling. There are noble pictures and glorious tombs — a collection of works of art, in short, which might be the sufficient goal of any pilgrimage. [2] Toledo and Cordova The church of St. John of the Kings must not be forgotten, nor its lovely cloister, with its richly clustered pillars on three sides and its perfect Gothic arches. This cloister is being slowly restored, but meantime the undisciplined roses have their way in it. We gathered great bunches of them. Outside this church hang chains, which were suspended there as votive offerings by cap- tives who had been delivered from the power of the Moorish infidel. Two synagogues yet remain to attest the former importance of the Jews in Toledo. The ceiling of one of these synagogues was made of beams from the cedars of Lebanon. Legends say that Toledo was the place of refuge of the Jews when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar. So ancient is it that you can believe anything, from the tale that ascribes its foundation to Hercules to that other solemnly enforced and detailed account which asserts that Tubal began to build it one hundred and forty- three years, to a day, after the Deluge. It looks old enough to have been begun even before the Deluge, and it is certain that, when the Moors first took it, it was largely populated by Hebrews. [3] Under Sunny Skies You feel as if nothing there ever had been or ever could be young, until you look up to some vine-wreathed balcony and meet the dark eyes of some Spanish beauty, smiling coquettishly from under her lace mantilla; and then, suddenly, the old, old world seems eternally young, with love and hope and smiles springing up like fiowers in the sun of every summer. Can you fancy it all, — this quaint old town, high, high above its yellow river, with its substantial Moorish architecture, its narrow _^ ^ which wind and climb ^ '-M^^^^ through the desolate city where two hundred thousand people used to make merry, and where its twenty thousand live now as quietly as if they were all holding their breath in order not to wake the echoes of some long-dead past? Can you fancy in this solemn, silent place, possessed by ghosts of Romans, Goths, Jews, Moors, and Christians, red roses flaunting their brightness in the warm south wind, and young cheeks glowing with new joys and hopes as if no one [4] Toledo and Cordova Carrier had ever died ? It seems to me that they need courage, this Spanish handful, — to laugh and live thus among the shades of the departed. Did we find Cordova more lively ? Somewhat so, perhaps; and yet Cordova, Hke Toledo, is a city which has been and is not, — which belongs more to the dead than to the living; for the gay days are past when it used to be called "the city of the I |||| ^^^ thirty suburbs and the three hundred mosques." Here, as in Toledo, are patios, and though I have heard them called courtyards, a patio is not precisely a court- yard, nor yet is it a garden or a room ; it is a deUghtful combination of all three. A small vestibule is usually between it and the street. On its four sides rise slender col- umns, which support a gallery. It is paved with marble. In the center there is often a fountain. Palms grow in these patios, flowers blossom there, ivy climbs round the graceful little pillars; here are statues, perhaps, or busts, or graceful urns. The patio is the heart of the home — the place [5] Under Sunny Skies where you go to sip after-dinner coffee, to chat, to lounge, to dream. Cordova was of importance in Caesar's time ; he half destroyed it because it sided with Pompey. " The Great Captain," who was born there, used to say that other towns might be better to live in, but the place in which one should be born was certainly Cordova. Cordova was renowned, in those far-off days, for its men of letters, whose wisdom astonished even the Romans. Roman Cordova yielded to the Goths. The Goths were conquered in turn by the Moors, and Cordova became the capital of Moorish Spain. It saw, under the Moors, the days of its greatest glory. In the tenth century it contained nearly a million of inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and six hundred inns. How is the mighty fallen! It is said to have some fifty thousand inhabitants now; but looking back to a sojourn of some days there, I can scarcely remember to have met any one in the streets save tourists and beggars. The place still has beautiful suburbs, and to drive out among the orange orchards and the [6] Toledo and Cordova olive groves is a memorable delight ; but to me Cordova means two things, and to find again those two, gladly would I cross sea and land. I would give you all else of Cor- , dova willingly, if OranocGroi/c-Tblcfln you left ^ me the free- dom of the r mosque- cathedral La Mezqui- ta, and of the Sulta- na's Garden. How shall one picture in words the wonders of La Mezquita? Its exterior gives no hint of what awaits you, for it is surrounded by walls from [7] Under Sunny Skies thirty to sixty feet in height ; but once you have entered through the Gate of Pardon the Court of the Orange Trees, the enchantment begins. It means so Httle to say, in set phrase, that there are a thousand columns, surmounted by the Moorish horseshoe arches ; and that some of these colums are of jasper, some of porphyry, some of verd antique, and no two ahke. You do not stop to think of these details; you wander on and on, as among 'the countless trees of a forest. You lose yourself in this divine immensity. It is like nothing else on earth. Look where you will, the interminable vista stretches out beyond and allures your tireless footsteps. The stained glass of the windows, when the sun strikes it, throws patches of vivid color against the marbles. The place is so vast that you scarcely think about the cathedral church, which that royal vandal, Charles V, allowed to be ingrafted in its center in 1523 — a piece of bar- barism which even he had the grace to regret when he came to see it later. There is one tiny chapel, with a roof like a shell, which is adorned with mosaics sent from Constantinople. These mosaics are said to be the [8] Toledo and Cordova finest in the world. This is the holy of holies, where the Koran used to be kept on a stand which cost a sum equal to five millions of dollars, and around this spot the marble was worn in a circular hollow by the faithful Mussulmans who used to crawl around it on their hands and knees. I have passed long afternoons in La Mezquita — wandering up and down among the aisles of this wonderful forest, studying the exquisite tracery of the carvings, recalling the old legends which cluster about the spot, kneeling with the faithful at their prayers, or kneeling alone in some far-off corner, and listening to the remote sound of the holy music, half able to fancy that I was in some outer court of heaven. It is after such an afternoon as this that I would gather roses in the Sultana's Garden that thus I might be brought back to the simple joys of our human life, and find rest for my soul after the exaltation born of La Mezquita. How long ago did the sultan make this garden for his love.? I do not remember how many hundred years have passed since the dark-eyed beauty gathered its first roses, but still they freight the soft wind with their breath, and still the fairy [9] Under Sunny Skies ferns grow green, and the oranges ripen in the sun, and the solemn old carp are happy in the fish pool ; and I audaciously pluck the roses that are the far-off descendants of those of that long- past time, and the sultana never heeds my tres- pass. She is as dead as Cordova. Louise Chandler Moulton. [,o] GRANADA There seems to be a silent, implacable feud between hotels and railway stations all over Spain. They keep as far away from each other as pos- sible. The station is usually quite out of town and the hotel very much in. But at Granada the station is far out from the city's heart in one direction, and the hotel where we were to stop still farther away in another, and it was a real journey from one to the other. It was between eleven and twelve at night when we drove thus the whole length of the unsleeping town. Save in Toledo and Cordova, — where every- thing sleeps all the time, except the beggars, — a true Spanish town sleeps only at high noon. All night long the lights burn ; all night long you see the people busily idle, idly busy. On through the town we went, glancing in at open doors as we passed, until suddenly stillness was about us, and a soft gloom through which the high moon could hardly pierce. Under Sunny Skies We had entered the inclosure of the Alhambra, and the elms the Duke of WelHngton planted were arching thickly over our heads ; and our hearts beat fast, and we whispered to each other, " We are here at last 1 " We drove on up the height, and everywhere the water murmured beside us, and the moon peered at us through the trees, and it was a dream in which we moved ; and yet no dream, for here we were in front of Hotel Washington Irving, and when we said, hardly knowing that we spoke : " Is it the Alhambra ? " the landlord answered in good English : " Yes, ladies, and your rooms are ready." If only it had been May, instead of the late November, then would all the Duke's elms have been full of the nightingales, who pair and build and brood there in the May and set the night mad with the passion of their singing. But when we woke next morning, we were sure that no time of year could have been lovelier. The air was soft as June — a young, unexhausted air, which it was a delight to breathe. Our windows looked out into a garden where fountains bubbled and roses bloomed, and down [12] Granada under the trees sat happy people sipping their coffee. The town of Granada reposes in the Vega, a lovely valley, thirty miles in length, which the system of irrigation so skillfully arranged by the Moors has turned into a veritable Garden of Eden. Round this happy valley circle frowning mountains, whose snow-crowned tops are ten thousand feet above the sea level — the Sierra Nevadas. The Sierra Nevadas look down upon the Alhambra, as the Alhambra looks down upon Granada. You can form no idea of the Alhambra itself until you have fairly entered it. We go in by the Gate of Justice, and we skirt the impertinent, unfinished palace of Charles V, and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the Plaza de los Aljibes, — the place of Moorish cis- terns, — and then we go on into the Court of the Myrtles, with its pond hedged by the sweet- scented myrtle, as green and fresh in November as in June. And then you wander on and on, from court to court, from loveliness to loveliness, and from the windows of one court you look forth to the [13] Under Sunny Skies haughty mountains, and from another at busy Granada down in the valley, and from others at the hills, mined with the caves where the gypsies burrow; and, whether you look out or in, you are so held in thrall by the unutterable charm of the place that you can scarcely breathe. One of the quaint inscriptions, being interpreted, says, " Look attentively at my elegance " ; but in a first visit to the Alhambra you cannot look atten- tively at anything. A sort of intoxication seizes you. You are impelled by a wild desire to see everything at once, and you hurry from place to place, fearful lest night should surprise you before you have seen it all. When the night does come, indeed, and you go back, as we did, the night after our first day there, to see it all by moonlight, ah, with what words dare one attempt to paint the transcend- ent, ethereal vision ? Delicate columns, cobweb traceries of carving, perfect arches, and over all the high moon's enchantment! Even when I write of it the old tightening of the breath comes back — the fear to take one step farther on or to speak, lest the whole dreamlike fabric should dissolve. [14] Granada When one reads of the charm of the Alhambra by moonHght, one beheves that it must be exag- gerated; but when you stand there you know it would be as impossible to exaggerate as to describe it. You go back again, the second day, prepared to look more coolly; and then you perceive the exquisiteness of all the details — the delicate, infinitely varied traceries of the walls, with their ceilings, as if a sudden, large-flaked snow shower had been turned to stone ; the slender pillars that seem fit only to serve for temples in fairyland, the wonderful, inexhaustible beauty that surrounds you everywhere. And every spot has its own legend. From the tower of La Cantiva a Chris- tian captive flung herself down to death, rather than live to be the bride of the Moorish king. In the Hall of the Ambassadors, Ayeshah, the mother of Boabdil, girt her son with a sacred sword and sent him forth for his vain struggle to repel the invaders; but on his way he broke his lance against the gateway, and his young sultana wept and called him " The Unlucky One." And in 1492 — the very year in which Columbus discovered America — conquered [15] Under Sunny Skies Boabdil surrendered his sacred sword and de- parted forever from the Alhambra. I must not forget the watchtower, from which we used to w^atch the sunset, as it kindled the west with crimson glory and warmed the snow- clad summits of the Sierra Nevadas with its reflected splendor. The Court of the Lions seems to me the very loveliest spot in the whole Alhambra. The lions themselves are not much larger or more important than an ordinary saw- horse. A group of them serves to uphold the central fountain and to give name to the court ; but that court, with its groups of delicate pillars, its exquisite arches, its lacelike carvings, and the vistas of vision it gives you, on and on into stately waiting chambers, surpasses anything else •I know for beauty. The Alhambra is Granada, and yet if the Alhambra were not there, how^ much else there would be ! There is the Generaliffe, with its lovely tropical garden, its old pictures, its superb view, and down in the town there are churches and convents, and the grand cathedral where Isabella, the Catholic, — the great Isabella, who sent Columbus forth to [i6] Granada find our new world, — lies buried, with her hus- band. King Ferdinand, beside her. Sumptuous indeed is their tomb, with their effigies resting side by side upon the lofty marble sar- cophagus. Near by is the tomb of Granada and the Royal Tombs , their daughter. Queen J nana, with her hand- some, worthless husband, Philip of Burgundy, and in the vault beneath, the four royal coffins may be seen. The coffin of Philip is that very one which [17] Under Sunny Skies his crazed, fond wife kept with her everywhere during the forty-seven years of her widowhood. Granada is a thoroughly living city, and not a dead one, like Toledo or Cordova, though in place of its former population of four hundred thousand it has only seventy-five thousand now, exclusive of the gypsies, who herd like outlaws in their holes in the hillsides. These live in the dirt, and wear rags, and lie and steal and tell for- tunes; but some of them are handsome, and if you bribe them sufficiently, they will put on clean finery and come into town and dance for you and promise you luck, while they look as if they would take pleasure in cutting your throat. Louise Chandler Moulton. [i8] CHESTNUT FARMS HE millions of peasants in Italy find it hard to get enough from the soil to feed themselves and to keep the thousands of landlords in a greater or less degree of lazy luxury. On the plains the country people do manage to have bread with their wine, or fruit, or vegetables, but the mountaineers would be only too glad to work for enough dry bread. Italy is a mountainous country, and at one thousand feet above the sea in the Apennines the low annual temperature does not favor luxu- rious vegetation. There grapes and figs cease to ripen, vegetables grow poor and scarce, corn is diseased and " nubby," and grain matures imperfectly. As one ascends, the prospect of food grows worse, and at fifteen hundred feet the tiny grain plots would seem contemptible to our Western [19] Under Sunny Sk les farmers. These little " beds," rather than fields, are actually propped up by solid stone walls, which keep the precious soil from washing down the mountain side. Some of the terraces are only two or three yards wide. The highest point of the Apennines is over nine thousand feet, and all along up the moun- tains for more than half that height thousands of persons are trying to wrench a living from Mother Earth. At an altitude of two thousand feet I read this inscription on a farmhouse gate : "Highest Summer Temperature 25° Centigrade," which is about seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, and this is reached only ten times or so during the summer. From two thousand feet up even wheat and potatoes refuse to grow, and chestnut trees fur- nish the sole hope of food. In fact, chestnuts are " the staff of life " in the higher Apennines, and one can walk for miles and miles in chestnut groves. The trees are planted at proper inter- vals, and are kept well pruned down, though they do not naturally attain to a great height. As I write I look out upon acres of them, covering the steep mountain sides so evenly that [20] Chestnut Farms the highest tree scarcely rises two feet above its lowest neighbor. No undergrowth except heather is allowed, for not only would it detract from the nourishment of the trees, but it would interfere w4th the gathering of the chestnuts. Some of the chestnut orchards belong to small peasant farmers, but most of them are owned by Home of Chestnut Farmers the gentry, who reside in the towns and rent out their property on the half-share principle. A peasant will take one or two or more thousand trees, keep them in order, gather the nuts, and divide the crop. The division is left entirely to the tenant, and among the Tuscan peasants this homely joke is current : " O master, come on, and let us halve yottr half of the crop ! " [21] Under Sunny Skies Among themselves the strictest honesty pre- vails, and although there are no walls, ditches, or other property lines visible, the humblest peasant would not pick up a chestnut under his neigh- bor's tree. An unwritten law allows a man to claim what lies on his own ground, no matter what the source, which leads to much ingenious trenching and terracing to prevent the chestnuts from rolling downhill. Whatever falls into a public path or highway belongs to the public by common consent, and no one but the meanest of peasants will deign to gather any of his own nuts which have thus strayed away. The biblical cus- tom of gleaning is still in vogue, and after a heavy rain the very poor turn out with bags and baskets, hunting for the chestnuts which have rolled into the sheltered nooks of the mountain paths. Within the groves are many rude stone huts, where tenants heap the straggling fall of nuts which they find in the daily round after the burs begin to crack open. But the real "harvest home" in early November is the signal for a general stir among the mountaineers. Old and young turn out together to thresh the trees and pick the nuts, with singing and merrymaking. [22] Chestnut Farms The sun sets by five o'clock in the afternoon, and everybody troops home gayly, anticipating a good dinner. The quahty of a dinner varies with the point of view, and an Apennine family asks nothing better than a caldron of hot potatoes boiled in salted water; or, if they chance to be epicures, cabbages cooked with cheese and olive oil are highly satisfactory. Every peasant house- wife tries to have something special for the harvest home and schemes beforehand to that purpose. The finger of scorn is pointed at the mother and wife who fails to do her duty at this time. The loft over a peasant's kitchen has a floor made of close slats on which are piled the fresh chestnuts, while a fire is built in the middle of the stone floor below. Doors and windows are tightly closed, so that the heat and smoke, rising through .the crevices above, will dry the chest- nuts. The small windows never lose their dingy look, for nobody dreams of cleaning them, and they are dim with the smoke of years of chest- nut drying. Once I engaged a servant who was fresh from the Apennines, and assigned her the task of [23] Under Sunny Skies washing my city windows and glass doors, first showing her how it should be done. When I returned from a walk, she met me with a rueful face. " O signora," she exclaimed tearfully, " I have scrubbed and scrubbed on the glass, but some of it is so smoked it will not come clean ! " The obdurate panes were of colored glass in tints of yellow! After the chestnuts are well dried and hulled, they are sent to a rude mill, w^here they are soon turned into a grayish flour, very heavy and very sweet. The chestnut millstone is of far coarser grain than that used for grinding flour, and one lasts about forty years. Some of the mills look very ancient, and not a few date back to the fourteenth century. Seeing an old millstone built into a moss-grown wall, I asked the white-haired miller what he thought about its age. He replied, " My grandfather died at the age of ninety, before I was born, but he told my father that the millstone was set in the wall before his father's day." . The year's store of chestnut flour is kept in a big chest which stands in the kitchen and is [24] Chestnut Farms made of chestnut wood. On many of these bins is carved a date of two or three centuries ago, but the wood is Preparing Necci soUd as if cut last year. The common way of preparing chestnut flour for the table is to mix it with water in a wooden bowl and then boil Under Sunny Skies the porridge in a copper ketde. When done, the stiff, brown mass is poured out on the deal table, and after cooling a little, it is sawed into slices by a tow string, a steel blade being considered injurious to the flavor of the porridge. If the family cook is in a good humor, she makes her household happy by baking need, which in color and shape are very much like buckwheat cakes. They are tough, sickeningly sweet, and very indigestible, yet they are consid- ered the " doughnuts " of an Apennine kitchen. The baking apparatus is as crude as it is unique : it consists of round tiles chipped from mountain slate and kept in a triangular rack in a corner when not in use. These tiles are heated in the ashes of a wood fire and then covered with chest- nut leaves that have been soaked in water to prevent them from scorching. Tile after tile is spread thickly with the batter and pressed into the rack which holds them in place until the stack is as high as the upright rods of the rack. After baking between the heated tiles for a few minutes, the cakes are served hot for supper, and what is left over will be eaten cold for to-morrow's breakfast. [26] Chestnut Farms Hanging from the smoked rafters of every kitchen are great festoons of dried chestnut leaves, ready to line the baking tiles. The gathering and stringing of these leaves in the autumn is the work of the young folks, who make it the occasion of much fun. One can scarcely speak of Apennine peasantry without emphasizing the fact that for ten months in the year their bill of fare alternates between chestnut porridge and chestnut cakes. It is small wonder, then, that in October and November freshly boiled chestnuts are welcomed as a dainty novelty. The daily household problem ceases to be, " Porridge or necci ? " and becomes instead, '' Balotte or tigliate?'' Balotte are chestnuts which have been boiled in the hull, and tigliate are those which have been hulled previous to being boiled in water, and seasoned with salt and fennel seed. On remonstrating with a woman who had prepared a half bushel of tigliate for the supper of her family of six, I was silenced by the confident reply, " Oh, no, they will do no harm, I assure you, because the fennel seed will help them digest." [27] Under Sunny Skies Next morning I counted heads and was relieved to find the family in full force. Never- theless, the tax on the digestive organs is very great, and the commune doctor assures me that dyspeptic troubles complicate every disease to which the Italian mountaineer is subject, and render many a case hopeless from the first. " The lean and hungry look " which every mountain peasant wTars, together with a half- famished gleam in his hollow eyes, tells a pitiful tale of the lack of nourishing food, although he may have never known actual hunger. - The taste for chestnuts would seem to pervade the Italian cities, for in the winter the chestnut vender is found at every other corner. Many a child on his way to school adds a cent's worth of roasted chestnuts to his lunch — a cent's worth varying from twenty to ten, as the season advances. The chestnuts are as large as English walnuts and of too coarse a flavor to be eaten raw; but when cooked with lamb, they taste like sweet potatoes. Boiled chestnuts, passed through a sieve and served with whipped cream, form a popular des- sert at the big hotels ; but necci, or chestnut [28] Chestnut Farms cakes, can be relished by few except those born to an appreciation of them. A poor mountain mother once asked me to carry down some home-knit socks to her soldier boy in Rom.e. I felt in- clined to smile when the recipient opened the bundle in my presence and came upon some flabby necci several days old. With Tuscan courtesy he immediately asked me to partake, and I read in his eyes the keenest enjoyment of this reminder of his Apennine childhood. Since then, when I see a man with a tray of chest- nut cakes hanging about the barracks, I no longer look upon him as a petty hawker, who is trying to wheedle the poor soldiers out of their scanty pence; to my enlightened vision he seems a philanthropist, seeking to refresh the homesick mountain boys as with a whiff of their native air. Chestnut Vender Olive May Eager. [29] MOUNT VESUVIUS There are few things more interesting to most people than a volcano — a "burning mountain." Even the dullest geographical lesson at school became interesting when the wonders of Hecla or Etna, the eruptions of Vesuvius or Stromboli, or the strange feats of the American geysers came under notice. Of all the volcanoes in the world Vesuvius is perhaps the most interesting. It is easy to climb, for it is only four thousand feet high ; and if you do not wish to climb it on foot, six dollars will take you up in a carriage to the foot of the cone, where you will find a wire-rope railway which will carry you to the very top. Therefore it is of all volcanoes probably the easiest of access, and certainly of all it has the most continuous and thrilling history. The plain in which Vesuvius stands is one of the most fertile spots in Europe. It was called Campania Felix — " the fortunate or happy plain " [30] Mount Vesuvius — in Roman times, and this name has lingered on throughout the Christian centuries, as indeed so appropriate a name deserved to do. In our days the district grows many crops of which the ancients were ignorant. It is certain that in Roman times Campania did not produce either oranges or lemons ; now they are one of the principal sources of the wealth of Naples, from whose port many fruit ships sail annually to the United States. It is certain, also, that the Romans knew nothing about tobacco, that plant with which the New World endow^ed the Old two hundred years ago. To-day, upon the plain round Pompeii, are many acres of this crop. To enumerate the products of the district would be a long task. Sufifice it to say that on the sunny slopes of the vast plain we find indigo, licorice, tobacco, rice, olives, lemons, grapevines, oranges, walnuts, chestnuts, corn of all sorts, figs, and peaches, besides many of the fruits which belong to the torrid zone, and nearly all those of the temperate regions. Although the plain is too hot for some of the northern fruits, these grow luxuriantly on the hills which surround it. The soil is deep and rich, the sun is bright and [31] Under Sunny Skies warm, and the rain is abundant throughout the winter months. In the midst of all this display of the bounties of nature stands Vesuvius, a monument of the hidden forces of destruction — dark, barren, uncul- tivated, and desolate. When we cast our eyes up the slopes of the mountain, the border line of cultivation shines out with bright green radiance, while abutting on it is the bleak barrenness of what we can only compare to a huge cinder heap. When an eruption occurs, a stream of red-hot slag flows down like a river of molten iron; sometimes rapidly, where the declivity is steep, sometimes slowly, where its course is impeded by a rock or a fissure. In any case it carries all before it. If it is flowing slow^ly, we can hardly see its progress. It rolls up to a house, and the house falls before it — we hardly know how. It approaches a tree and wraps it in its fiery mantle. The sap within the tree generates steam, and the tree explodes with a sound like the discharge of a cannon. As long as the supply continues from the mountain, so long does the stream push on until it rolls into the sea, where it casts up [32] Mount Vesuvius volumes of steam and hisses as if it were bent on competing with the fiery venthole at the top of the mountain. [33^ Under Sunny Skies Interesting as these eruptions undoubtedly are, it is always best to view them from a respectful distance, as the vapors issuing from their vicinity are likely to choke or scald one who approaches too near them. This was the case in 1872, when a party of people were killed by a sudden jet of steam which burst forth from an unnoticed fissure. It is impossible to tell when or where such fis- sures will be opened, for the w^iole subsoil is in a condition of explosion. Earthquakes are almost incessant, and the shaking opens fissures in many places. The pleasantest way to see Vesuvius is to visit it on a summer night. As the sun dips below the horizon and throws up the island of Ischia, like a purple mist set in a gold frame, the first moon rays are already beginning to gleam behind the distant Apennines; and before we are half- way across the vast lava beds, we are in a fairy scene of silver brightness, checkered with the dark shadows and rugged outlines of the lava streams around us. At midnight we reach the lower station of the rope railway which is to draw us up the cone. Here man and horse must have rest and supper. [34] Mount Vesuvius In an hour's time we are seated in a car, and are being hauled up the steep sides of the cone. A short walk brings us to the eruptive center, and what a scene meets us there ! Steam is coming out in large puffs from the cone, and now^ A Street in Pompeii and then with a loud roar the mountain casts large masses of red-hot stones higher and higher into the air. It is quite dark now, for the moon has set. We see the red vapor rise fiercely as the hot stones fly upward. The still night air is rent by the roar of the mountain, as it discharges a fxcry [35] Under Sunny Skies volley into space, presently to fall in a harsh clattering shower on the rocks around us. As dawn begins to break we see the shadow of the mountain projected across the bay. The peaks to the eastward are warmed with a glow of sunlight, and the blue sea to the westward is tinged with a golden halo. It is a scene of mar- velous grandeur and beauty, and we should forget its danger if the dead city of Pompeii did not lie at the foot of the slope, four thousand feet beneath us, teaching us its dread lesson. Our experienced guide wakes us from this reverie, for it is full daylight now, and we can approach nearer the crater without great danger. We follow him confidently, though we are half stifled by the fumes of the sulphur. As we approach we experience an uncomfortable sen- sation, for the hot stones now and then fall unpleasantly near us. Our guide puts the ladies in a place of safety; but we may go on, always watching his every gesture and keeping an eye on the mountain. The walking is rough and steep now; the fumes are almost stifling, and the cinders beneath us are so hot that we feel our feet burning. The [36] Mount Vesuvius guide puts his handkerchief over his mouth; we follow his example. He has reached the top, and we are close behind him. We look over and see a mass of red-hot cinders like a burning cliff. As the wind clears away the steam we look dow^n, down, into an immense black gulf. The mountain roars again ; the red-hot stones fly past us. We are safe here because the wind is now quite strong and carries the stones to lee- ward ; but it is not a place to linger in. A sudden change of wind might be fatal. The falling in of the ridge on which we stand would also mean death. The scene is exciting to the last degree, and as we turn to descend and see our friends looking at us through their field glasses, we feel that they, too, must have held their breath when they saw us apparently shrouded in steam and close to the vortex. E. N. ROLFE. [37] TUSCAN PEASANTS The peasants of Tuscany are true children of nature — beautiful in their youth and always a little youthful even in their old age, with the most pathetic eyes and the most smiling lips in the world ; wath the grace of a courtier and the simplicity of a child in their manner; like chil- dren, quickly moved to pleasure or discontent, and passionate in their attachments and their aversions. By two phrases you may recognize them : "Patience," and "Who knows?" With the one they beguile your impatience ; with the other they deprecate your curiosity or wrath. " Patience ! " says the bootmaker, who promised your boots a month ago. "It is so much better to have them well made than made in haste." • " Patience, signorina ! " says the tranquil person at two o'clock, who should have sent your dinner at one. " It was ordered, yes, but it slipped my mind." [3-8] Tuscan Peasants Indifferent to your starving condition, the bread man has not brought your breakfast rolls at eight, nor at nine, nor at ten. " But when will he bring them, or do you think he will ever bring them at all ? " you ask desper- ately of your handmaiden. And she shrugs her shoulders philosophically and answers, " Who knows ? " [39] Under Sunny Skies Typical of all the Tuscan peasantry and walk- ing embodiment of all their traits is our house- maid, Assunta. Spare and meager, a gray-purple skirt, a plaid waist, a three-cornered black ker- chief stamped with green strawberries tied per- manently about her head, invariable smiles upon her lips, and an ever-ready greeting, " Happy day," " Good appetite," or " Pleasant entertain- ment," falling benediction-wise from her, — that is Assunta. She is a Fiesolana ; that is, she was born, bred, and married, and will doubtless die and be buried one day, in white, fortresslike, Etrurian Fiesole. Farther than to Florence — three miles away — she has never been, and I doubt if she ever thought of going. She seems to have spent all her life in scrub- bing. She told us her short story one day, with quickly changing smiles and tears. She has a husband, yes, but he drinks too much, poor man ! and three sons, but one is a boy, and one "an unfortunate," — that is, an imbecile and crippled, — and the third "has bad luck." There is a daughter, but she went to Rome, and — none knows the rest. [40] Tuscan Peasants But since she entered our service, Assunta seems to think herself a conspicuous favorite of fortune ! It cannot be said she knows much of house- hold requirements, but she makes up, over and over again, in good will what she lacks in expe- rience. What a state of anxiety she lived in during her month of probation ! " Oh, if only the signorine are contented ! " she would cry a dozen times a day, clasping her hands. " Let us hope it ! Let us hope it ! " — with an accent which went to our hearts. We decided then that never should we have the forti- tude to send her away ; so it was lucky for us that she proved teachable and neat. When it was settled that she should remain with us for a salary she considered munificent, her joy really added a new pleasure to life. It is very agreeable to have a spring of happiness in the house, and the sight of her beaming face often brightened our own countenances. She took the keenest interest in our costumes, our little possessions and occupations, admiring im- partially the paintings of one and the products of the other's typewriter. [41] Under Sunny Skies A typewriter seems always to be a sort of magic box to the imaginations of our Tuscan servants. We shall not soon forget our brown Margherita, who watched in amazement the pages grow beneath my fingers one evening, and then went away to confide to her signora her aspiration for a little machine of her own. If she had one she could send word to her own people ; she had watched the signorina ; it was very simple. " The signorina leans her chin on her hand and thinks — the little machine does the rest ; and it prints it all out — not writing, but good print, like a newspaper." Almost unbelievable is the poverty of the Tus- can poor, even to those who know the poverty of our great cities. Perhaps it is easier to under- stand the horror there, where every condition of life is tense and abnormal. But here, on the sunny hillsides, under the blue skies, amid the bounteous vineyards and fruit orchards, it seems incredible — as it ought to seem — that there should be whole families like our Assunta's, drawing the nourishment for their laborious lives solely from the coarse, sour, black peasant bread. [42] Tuscan Peasants Not a drop even of cheapest wine, not a mouth- ful of meat ; and, hardest of all, they may not even know the taste of the fruits, though in the midst of overflowing orchards their homes are set. We gave Assunta a basket of these fruits to keep the Christmas festa. We did it rather apolo- getically, as offering something so common that it could scarcely represent a feast. To our aston- ishment she turned quite pale. " Do the signorine mean that they are for me — for me, for myself } " she exclaimed. Being assured that we did so mean, she clasped her hands and burst into tears. " Never in our lives," she said, " I or my people have eaten these things; it will be for the first time! Diomio!'' This last exclamation was the purest thanksgiving I ever heard. It was our turn to grow pale. "Assunta," said I, " is that true ? Do you mean that you — here in Tuscany — have never eaten an orange, nor a fig } " " A fresh fig, signorina, yes, now and then — great purple ones sell for sixteen a soldo in the fig season ; but dried, like these, never. And for oranges — never, never ! Dio mio ! " [43] Under Sunny Skies She went about the rest of the day bet\veen tears and Hteral praising God ; then departed with her spoil, giving us a parting gHmpse of a face which will be a reproach to me while I live. That such things should be in fruitful Tus- cany ! and that in golden California the wealth of orchards spoils upon the ground, while thou- sands of lips are fever-parched and thirsty in New York! There is another class of poor in Tuscany, however, who move me to other memories. An irregular corps — we never knew whether there w^ould be one or six — never failed to put in a daily appearance. " Assunta," I would say, startled from my writing by an unusually heavy peal of the bell, " was that the postman ? " " No, signorina," she would answer tranquilly ; " it was a poor one." A little later the bell would ring again. "Who rang just now, Assunta.^" I would inquire. " Only a poor one, signorina." And half an hour later would come another peal, from another poor one. [44] Tuscan Peasants Those poor ones ! What a burden they added to Hfe ! There was the crippled poor one, who sat by the roadside, elaborately doing up and undoing his injured member whenever any one appeared. There was the blind poor one, who absently bestowed on us a smile of recognition when we passed. There was the poor one who [45] Under Sunny Skies waylaid us on our way into a friend's house, and then, relying upon our defective memories, way- laid us again on our way out. There was the pair of poor ones who, after receiving alms at the street corner, calmly followed us home, rang our bell, and met our astonishment with placid demands for more gifts. We were not at all surprised to learn that one of these poor ones gave his daughter a dowry of twenty thousand francs recently, upon her mar- riage. We steeled our hearts, naturally over- tender, and finally took refuge in announcing that we were but poor ones ourselves. Yet when I think of the real poverty on every side, my heart softens even to these fictitious poor of Tuscany. Figs and olives denied might make beggars of many of us ; and I, myself, under some circumstances, might come to think it a holy occupation to sit on a stone wall and amass francs for dowries ! Grace Ellery Channing. [46] THE MACARONI COUNTRY Macaroni, not bread, is the staff of life in Italy. In every kitchen, from the lowest to the highest, it is daily cooked in some form, and with the very poor it is often almost the only food. There are as many modes of serving it as there are grades in the social scale. The poorest class of people simply boil their macaroni in salted water. A frequent sight is of picturesque, ragged, brown-skinned creatures eat- ing long, slippery ropes of boiled macaroni in the open streets. With head thrown well back, they hold one end of the long, floury ribbon in the fingers high in air. It rapidly grows shorter and shorter, and finally disappears altogether. People a little higher in the social scale still boil macaroni in salted water, but drink cheap Chianti wine with it. In private families and in restaurants of the better class it is cooked in many delicious ways. Baked with layers of Swiss and Parmesan cheese, boiled with cheese and [47] Under Sunny Skies cream, stewed with veal or chicken broth, or dressed with tomato sauce, bread sauce, or tgg sauce — no matter how the ItaHan cook prepares it, this staple food of their nation is invariably excellent. But, alas! good and palatable as it is, the macaroni consumed in Italy, especially in the neighborhood of Naples, is not manufactured with desirable attention to cleanliness. He who has taken that long drive along the southern coast from Naples to Pompeii, through the town of Torre Annunziata, where macaroni factories abound, will never forget how his car- riage passes between long lines of the drying stuff. The wheels almost rub against it as they add their contribution to the large amount of dirt already collected upon the drying macaroni. It hangs on long poles of bamboo, which swing between upright poles. At a distance one might suppose that all the Neapolitan world had been washing clothes, and that this were drying day. Approaching nearer, the clothes become long, yellowish ribbons of drying macaroni. It is swung before low, black doorways, and women, men, children, and dogs swarm around it and rub [48] The Macaroni Country against it as they pass in and out of the mass of dough waving in the air. Women think nothing of wiping their soiled hands on the mass. I watched one day a dog covered with mud walk unmolested in and out among the moist strings hanging within his reach, and nobody thought [49] Under Sunny Skies to chase him away. I have seen worse yet — too unpleasant to relate ; but in spite of all this the people seem to find the food sweet and palatable. After it is thoroughly dried into crisp, long pipes of ribbons there is little evidence that it has been soiled. Carefully wiped, soaked, and dressed, it is perhaps not so unclean as one might suppose. Yet I w^as much consoled to learn that this maca- roni of Naples is not exported, but is kept mainly for the use of the people themselves. That which we eat at home is prepared in larger, cleaner factories in other parts of Italy. The fabrici, so-called, of southern Italy, are small but numerous. They stretch for a long distance along the coast tow^ard Pompeii, and line both sides of the streets. Before almost every door are these long rows of the drying macaroni, flying like flags in the air. Barefooted men emerge from the doors from time to time, bearing poles of bamboo filled with the freshly made macaroni, and place them betw^een the upright, waiting " clothes poles," taking aw^ay those that are dried and ready for use. In the warm, sunny air of the South, tw^o or three days' drying makes the dough pipes hard and brittle. [50] The Macaroni Country Judging from the outside, I was prepared for something much worse within w^hen I entered a small macaroni factory ; but the interior was comparatively clean. There was a large, bare- floored room, with a dark-beamed ceiling from which dangled many ropes of drying macaroni, and thrown dowm near the door were bags of the prepared flour of which it is made. The process of making it is very simple. The dough is mixed in a trough, or sink, simply by adding water to the prepared flour. I took some of this flour into my hands. It looks like our Indian meal, but is finer. We were told that it is nothing but very glutinous wheat flour, with a plentiful admixture of dried eggs. When a large mass of puttylike dough has been made, it is placed under a large swinging beam of wood to be kneaded. Astride of this beam sat five or six almost naked, brown-backed men, seesawing up and down and pressing the beam by the weight of their bodies into the yielding lump of dough. Forward and backward many times they went, the heavy beam making deep creases at one round, to erase them in the next. [51] Under Sunny Skies What a picture they made, these seesawing NeapoHtans, under that low-beamed ceihng, amid the swinging masses of drying macaroni ! They were quite bare to the waist. Their backs were toward us, but their dark faces turned over their shoulders in smiling curiosity as to the strange intruders. Very thin trousers came only to the knees, and they swamg their naked brown feet back and forth as the big beam moved up and down. Though the perspiration was starting from every pore of their dark skins, they were smiling like children at play. But this perpetual seesaw for bread and butter — or rather for macaroni — must soon become very unlike play. When the dough is so thickly kneaded as to be difficult to impress with the fingers, these brown-bodied men spring from their seesaw and carry it to a round press which stands at one side of the room. The bottom of this press, or cylinder, is perforated with holes, through which the dough is pushed by a thick plate, or plunger, pressed down by a screw. This makes macaroni without any holes in the sticks. When pipe macaroni is made, the holes in the bottom are wider above than below, and have [52] The Macaroni Country mandrels centered in them, so that the dough, when pushed through the hole, is pressed about a round piece of metal which shapes the inside face of the pipe macaroni. If you take a funnel for pouring liquids into a jar and put a thin rod of iron through the funnel from above, fastening this rod above but not below, so that it will remain firmly in the center of the funnel, you will have a mold on the same principle as one for one stick of pipe macaroni. You can easily understand that if the funnel were filled with dough, and this were pressed down through the bottom and around the rod, it would come out as a pipe. As it issued in long, snaky ropes from the bottom of the press, a boy violently fanned them to keep them from sticking together. The boy, in his zeal to show the process to us, and also perhaps with a wild idea of " dusting it off for company," pulled out an armful of the new^ly made macaroni strips and energetically beat and flopped them several times against the black floor, dusty and grimy with the accumulations of years. Then, smiling proudly with an air of having done his whole duty, he presented it for us to see. [53] Under Sunny Skies It was then, like the rest, thrown over a bamboo pole and carried into the open air to dry. In private houses and in good hotels the cooks often prepare the macaroni from the beginning, preferring their own make to these doubtfully clean fabrics. Eleanor H. Patterson. [54] THE CITY OF ST. MARK The Picturesque City of Venice. — Within and WITHOUT THE CATHEDRAL OF St. MaRK Fancy a city where there is no need of horses ! A city where, after a busy week of sight-seeing, a Httle eight-year-old wa'ites home, " I have seen only one horse in Venice, and he stood looking over the fence of the soldiers' parade ground as if he felt lonely." Venice! In that name you have the key to many wonders. You may come, as we did, by boat from Trieste, and be wakened at sunrise by the sailors' voices as they cast anchor, to open your sleepy eyes on forms which pictures have long made familiar to you. You say : " There is the doge's palace ! There is St. Mark's, with its many domes ; and that must be the Piazetta, with its beautiful twin pillars surmounted, one by the winged lion with his mystic book, and one by St. Theodore and the crocodile." [55] Under Sunny Skies Yes, they are all just as you fancied them ; but did any good fairy make you dream of such beauty of color ? You will be here many sunrises and sunsets before you can find names for the delicate tints in the marbles of the doge's palace, or know whether it is the miracle of arch and dome and sculptured form or the glory of bronze and mosaic that dazzles your northern eyes as they rest on St. Mark's. The black gondolas are the only colorless objects on which your eyes fall. When Venice was in her pride the gondolas, too, reveled in color ; but there came a time when Venetian pomp decked the private gondolas with velvet and gold trappings till the good doge found the extrava- gance of material and brilliancy of hue too much even for Venice ; and since that edict went forth in the fifteenth century, only black gondolas are seen. They may be elegantly carved, and the shining brasses may be of exquisite workmanship, but the long, slender boat is always black, and the cushions and curtains of the somber little cabin are also black. At first you step with great caution into the gondola, and as you float along the narrower [56] The City of St. Mark canals you feel certain that some larger boat, as it bears down directly upon you, is bent on your destruction ; but the swift gondolier gives a quick thrust with his oar, and you are instantly out of The Cathedral of St Mark _ _^ ^^^^ danger. He gives a curious little cry Ll as you turn around a corner of a great palace, and another gondola flies out of your path, and you both go on uninjured. This happens again and again, till you come to have perfect * faith in both gondola and gondolier. [57] Under Sunny Skies Perhaps your first impression of the Grand Canal may be that fifteenth century palaces are after all a little shabby. Fifth Avenue palaces are undeniably fresher ; but look a little longer, and see how these old palaces gain in beauty ! You weary after a time of the brilliant sun- shine of the Grand Canal, and seek shade in the narrower waters shut in by the high palace walls. Here is the church of St. Maria Formosa, which was for several centuries the scene of a curious annual festival. It was an ancient custom in Venice on St. Mary's day for twelve young maidens, whose w^edding portions had been pro- vided by the state, to be publicly married in what was then the cathedral church of San Pietro. It had gradually become the favorite day of all the year for weddings. A procession of gondolas, gayly decked with flags and flowers, brought the twelve brides, each with her attendants bearing her dowry in a carved chest. They assembled at the church to await the bridegrooms ; mass was celebrated, and then the patriarch gave his blessing on the service. The sea rovers of Trieste, wary pirates, had watched the splendors of this great ceremony, and [58] The City of St. Mark in the year 923 they laid a fell plot to carry off the brides and their treasures. They concealed themselves on an island near the church, and when the glittering cortege had entered the church, they leaped from their hiding places, burst open the sacred doors, seized the frightened maids from the very altar, carried them to their boats, and set sail for Trieste. When the grooms arrived upon the scene they were led by the doge himself in hot pursuit of the bandits. The robbers were overtaken in a narrow canal, still known as the Porto delle Donzelle, — the " Gate of the Damsels," — and not a sea rover escaped the swords of the Venetians. The brides were brought back in triumph to the city, and in the evening of that eventful day the wed- ding rites so strangely interrupted were solem- nized with more than usual splendor. A festival commemorative of this event was soon after instituted. Twelve maidens in cost- liest array were rowed in a gorgeous galley to St. Mark's, where they were met by the doge and signiory. Then they passed in procession to St. Maria Formosa, where mass was cele- brated. This festival was discontinued in 1379, [59] Under Sunny Skies during a time of war, and though attempts were afterward made to revive it, they were never successful. The steamboat was a serious innovation in this ancient city of the sea. The day the first steamers began to ply on the Grand Canal every gondolier in Venice " struck." The gondoliers were reso- lute ; if steamboats were to carry passengers about Venice they would not, for they believed that in a long contest with steam the gondolier must disappear. After seven years of competition, however, it became apparent that the steamboat was the more likely to yield, for the piles on which these stately palaces rest seem to be unequal to the rush and swirl of water which steam produces. As the steamer passes along the Grand Canal the dwellers in the palaces on its banks can feel the quiver of the ancient walls. Steamers ply safely between the islands and give the visitor a glimpse of the life which goes on there. Burano is a quaint old town, an hour from Venice by boat. If one is inclined to believe that the tide of beggars which once flooded Naples is unknown now in Italy, let him go to Burano. [60] The City of St. Mark As the boat approaches the grassy banks, crowds of boys are seen disporting along the shore. They wade out to meet the traveler. They clamor to carry his hand bag or rug as he lands, to guide him to the village, to row him around the island — anything to turn an honest penny; but if all these demands are refused, they pull off their caps and begin the serious business of begging. Fancy a black-eyed, merry-faced little beggar, with cheeks as round and red as apples, holding out his hat and crying, " I am starving, blessed lady — I am starving!" and when you laugh in his face he laughs, too, gives up the plaintive tone, and " turns a cart-wheel," to see if that will not win pennies. In the tumble-down old village the chief industry is now, as it has been for centuries, lace making. In four large, low chambers are three hundred girls bending over their lace pillows. A little bright-faced girl of eight smiled up at us with her dark Italian eyes as we bent to examine her work, and shyly held out a bunch of yellow wallflowers which she took from her bosom to give to our little eight-year-old. Girls of twelve [6i] Under Sunny Skies here could do beautiful work ; and young women who considered themselves well paid at a franc and a half — thirty cents — for a long day of weary stitching, were making lace w^hich sold for five hundred dollars a meter. Many designs were valued at over fifty dollars a meter, and nothing was to be bought at this lace school for less than six dollars a yard. There was a curious inconsistency between the poverty of the workers and the luxury their work repre- sented. Yet the girls were well placed and well occupied in comparison with their little brothers, who had swarmed about us in the street. Indeed, their happy, healthful faces contrasted very pleasantly with those of any class of working girls in America. The twenty-fifth of April is a great holiday in Venice, for it is the Festival of St. Mark, the patron saint of the city. Up to the year 829 Venice was under the patronage of St. Theodore, but in that year a certain caliph of Egypt was building himself a palace in Alexandria, and in his contempt of the Christians he despoiled their churches to adorn his palace. It was feared that the shrine of St. Mark in Alexandria would be [62] The City of St. Mark robbed and desecrated, and two devout Venetians conceived the bold plan of transporting the bones of that saint from Alexandria to Venice. They bribed one of the priests in the church to assist them and took the relics from the shrine. The Venetians, disguised as seamen, placed the precious bones in a basket and covered them with green herbs and joints of roast pork. As they arrived at the pier they cried loudly, " Pork ! pork ! " and every Mussulman avoided them. Once on board, the precious basket was wTapped in a sail and hoisted to the yardarm. On the passage a terrible storm arose, and many ships were lost ; but the story goes that St. Mark him- self appeared on the waves and warned the navi- gator of this bark to furl his sails. The warning was heeded and the vessel arrived at Venice in safety. The Venetians received the precious relics with great rejoicings. Processions and prayers and public holidays celebrated the arrival. Pilgrims flocked from far and wide to worship at the new shrine, and even crowned heads came to do him reverence ; and then and there St. Mark became the patron saint of Venice. [63] Under Sunny Skies The chapel, built in 830 for the shrine of St. Mark, grew with the centuries and was en- riched with the spoils of many lands in the far-reaching conquests of the Venetians, till it is to-day perhaps the most richly decorated cathe- j dral in Europe. The pavement itself is of rare 1 stone mosaic of the twelfth century. The glorious Byzantine arches are rich with mosaics of brilliant color and gleam with gold. There was a time when every ship that sailed from Venice was instructed to bring home some treasure for the temple. This explains the Eastern character of much of the ornamentation and the vast variety in the carving of the capitals of the five hundred columns which support the cathedral. The canopy over the high altar is supported by elaborately carved columns of the eleventh cen- tury. The altar itself is adorned with gold and silver reliefs, set in precious stones, of such great value that they are inclosed by doors which are ji only opened at Easter, at Christmas, and on this |; twenty-fifth of April, — the Festival of St. Mark. Ii The altar was made in the eleventh century |; in Constantinople, and is not only of exquisite workmanship but of dazzling brilliancy, with its [64] The City of St. Mark gold and precious stones. Crowds gathered to see it on St. Mark's day and to hear the high mass, which was celebrated with unusual pomp. All Venice took a holiday — except the busy gondoliers, each of whom, doubtless, found an hour to visit his ^ favorite shrine. In the afternoon the great square in front of St. Mark's was crowded with people to listen to the music by a military band. We viewed the busy scene from the balcony over the en- trance to St. Mark's, where stand the famous bronze horses remarkable history. No one knows who made these horses. Some say they are Roman; some say they are of the time of the best Greek art — possibly by Lysippus — and were once in Alexandria. From there it is said that they were carried by Augustus to adorn [65] which have had such a Under Sunny Skies Rome, and that afterwards Nero placed them on his triumphal arch, while Trajan claimed them later to adorn his own. When Constantine changed the seat of empire to Constantinople they were very possibly carried from Rome to the new capital. It is certain, however, they were brought, in the time of the Crusades, from Constantinople to Venice to adorn St. Mark's, and there they remained till Napoleon swept down in 1797, when they were transported from Venice to Paris. When Napoleon's short day was over, Emperor Francis of Austria brought back the horses in triumph to their old place on St. Mark's, and here they still stand, as beautiful as they were eighteen hundred years ago. Sibyl C. Emerton. [66] YOUNG GREEKS OF TO-DAY How Greek Children live and amuse THEMSELVES From much reading about Theseus, Achilles, Telemachus, and other young Greek heroes, I used to think of all Greek boys as handsome, strong, brave, adventurous, and with such forti- tude as that of the small Spartan who let the fox under his cloak gnaw him without uttering a cry. But the Greek boys I see daily in Athens seem much more like American boys than I should, some years ago, have expected to find them. They fly kites, pitch pennies, — which they call septa, — play tag, quarrel and make friends, just as boys do at home. It seems strange that they should do so in the shadow of the Parthenon ruins. It amazed me at first to find them flying kites from the top of Mars Hill, where the Are- opagus council used to occupy rough seats cut in the rock, and where St. Paul preached eighteen hundred years ago to the " men of Athens." [67] Under Sunny Skies When I came up to a group of youngsters who were tossing quoits near the Cave of the Furies, the other day, I found their quoits to be pieces of beautifully poUshed marble broken from an ancient temple; while some little children, sitting in the sand below the Acropolis, were building their babyhouses and farmyards of bits of old fluted columns. Many of the shanties of the poorest people are propped up with finely carved Ionic capitals and have parts of broken statues of Hermes or Athena set into the plaster over the door. It also strikes one with a sort of unreasoning wonder and admiration to find the little children here chattering away freely in a language which is still, to a great extent, the language of Homer and Sophocles — the same which costs our boys so many hours of hard study at school. One can hardly get used to hearing Httle girls talk to their dolls and little boys quarrel over their games in Greek. The names. of these children take us back to the Greek histories of our school days. Even the waiters are called Alcibiades and Pericles ; though I am told there can scarcely be a drop of [68] Young Greeks of To-day pure old Greek blood in their veins, as many nations from north, south, east, and west have conquered and lived in Greece since the days of her ancient glory, and have mingled their various nationalities with hers. [69] Under Sunny Skies Hence it is no wonder that the young people one meets in Athens have Httle resemblance to the beautiful statues which are preserved in the museums here, and which were the ideal of Greek forms and features in classic times. Indeed, I have seen very few handsome faces, although many have soft, pretty gray eyes, which look very well with their thick black hair. The native dress — which has not descended from the ancient Greeks, but has been adopted from the Albanians and Montenegrins — is pic- turesque and becoming, and although many boys and girls are beginning to wear the same common- place clothes which one sees everywhere else, enough national costumes are left to give the streets a very gay and foreign look to American eyes. The women and girls have a variety of pretty costumes. Perhaps the most common consists mainly of a full white shirt and long white skirt, trimm^ed with bands of scarlet or of some darker embroidery. Over this they wear gayly figured and trimmed aprons, and heavy jackets, either of white woolen material braided in dark blue or black, or of velvet embroidered in gold. A thin [70] Young Greeks of To-day gauze veil of white or yellow is wrapped around the head, and the neck and forehead are orna- mented with rows of bright gold coins. The men and boys look somewhat like ballet dancers, for they wear white leggings, which look like tights, all the way up to their waists, and over these very full white linen skirts, called " fustanellas." These are made of yards and yards of material folded into tiny pleats and standing out just like a ballet skirt. They are very short, not reaching to the knees. Their sHppers are long, pointed, and turned up at the toes with big red or black pompons. They wear short jackets braided in black, blue, or silver, and with loose sleeves falling back from their full white shirt sleeves. A low red fez with a long blue tassel completes their costume, except in cold weather, when they throw over their shoulders a heavy and shape- less cloak of brownish felt edged with white braid, or of goatskin with long shaggy hair. Sometimes they draw the pointed hood over their heads. My window looks out on the palace square. Every morning I have a full view of the Royal [71] Under Sunny Skies Guards, a regiment dressed in this national cos- tume. As they march by and station themselves before the palace, the effect of their white fus- tanellas and pointed slippers is very picturesque. Everywhere in Athens one hears music, made by odd instruments such as we never see in America. One is a barbaric kind of drum with a dull, hol- low sound. Then there is a shepherd's pipe with a sweet high note; another is a sort of one-stringed guitar; another sounds like a bagpipe. The Greek singing is also peculiar. I have been unable to discover any real time to it, but it is continuous, wavering backward and forward on a few notes with a strong nasal, and rather mournful, twang. The people seem to enjoy it immensely, although they always look very solemn when they sing. [72] . Young Greeks of To-day On the first day of the Greek Lent the country people around Athens come into town and dance about the temple of Jupiter Olympus, in what is thought to be a relic of an old classic festival of Athena. The big common, which stretches away on all sides around the fine Corinthian columns which still remain of the great temple, is thronged with people, chiefly from the country, and in a variety of costumes. Farmers and shepherds from the slopes of Hymettus and Parnes, with bronzed skins, rough black hair and unkempt beards, their shaggy cloaks thrown over one shoulder, stand in groups discussing flocks and crops. Mothers, in their best embroidered skirts and gayest gilt and silver ornaments, sit on the broken shafts of columns, putting their babies to sleep. Bright-eyed boys and girls climb about the ruins, laughing and shouting. The chief dancer, a young fellow in his white fustanella, short black braided jacket, and black satin cap, wheels and pirouettes, sinks on one knee, raises his hands high above his head, ducks under his neighbor's arm, twists and turns, and raises himself lightly on the toes of his pointed [73] Under Sunny Skies slippers, but all very slowly, very seriously, very silently. Meantime a circle of others, linked together, are following him with as earnest an expression as if they were performing a religious rite; it is hard to realize that they are enjoying one of the favorite amusements of the Greek peasant. The Greeks are born dancers, being very grace- ful, and light on their feet. Even the old waiter, who brings us our thick Turkish coffee and fig paste under the shadow of the great Jupiter Olympus ruins, catches the infection of the scene and executes a few steps as he performs his errand. There are many women in charming costumes on the grounds, but they do not dance. Perhaps they think it too public a place, for when we go down toward the sea, later in the afternoon, we see a number of rings, formed entirely of girls, in bright-colored dresses, dancing on the grass of the meadows, with the reddish-brown mass of the Acropolis as a background, and the brilliant blue ^gean Sea sparkling in front of them. Edith Crosby. [74] THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG TURKS Not until a Turkish child reaches his sixth or seventh year does his education begin, and his first day at school is celebrated with ceremonies that are unheard of in America. No other such ponies are to be found as the spirited iron-gray ponies of the East, and one of these is gorgeously capari- soned for the new pupil, who is met at his own door by all the school, dressed in holiday clothes. A priest makes a short prayer, the child is placed upon his pony, and the pupils are formed in double line. The procession moves, singing hymns as they go, with the little hero of the day following, and thus he is initiated into the new world of learning. In the primary schools boys and girls are edu- cated together. The teachers are taken from the priesthood and from the graduates of the theo- logical universities who have learned to read the Koran, which is written in Arabic, and which all good Mussulmans must learn how to read. [75] Under Sunny Skies A primary school is composed of one or two rooms, or " holes in the wall," with three divans for the pupils and a seat for the teacher. The pupils sit crosslegged in a line on the divans, holding their books on their knees and all recit- ing at the same time, in a loud, shrill voice. They learn grammar and the four rules of arithmetic. When they are able to read from the Koran a little they take up writing, and, as there are no writing tables or desks, they hold their copy books in their hands. This is all the education they receive in the primary schools. Wealthy men engage European teachers to help their children in the study of languages and modern science ; but the common people have to satisfy themselves with the little that is to be obtained at the primary schools. If any one is astonished that the governing class in Turkey generally talk French, and often English, Greek, Italian, and German, it may be stated that the Turk, like the Russian, has an aptitude for tongues. More time, however, is given to the study of the Koran than to anything else. No account of the education of young Turks would be complete without some reference to the [76] The Education of Young Turks A Turkish Teacher and Pupil story-tellers of the East, who have as much influ- ence as the professors of mathematics and his- tory. In the early training of the child by its nurse and tutor, wonderful stories are told to him to inculcate moral and religious truths, and by them he is taught that he must not be afraid of death; that he must not be astonished at any- thing, no matter how^ strange ; and that he is not obliged to say anything in conversation that will be against his own interests. [77] Under Sunny Skies ■k The Turks consider any show of surprise as a sign of bad breeding, and this is taught in the schools. An amusing instance of this pecuKarity comes to my mind. Dr. Washburne, president of the American College at Constantinople, brought with him from the United States one of Edison's phono- graphs, which he exhibited to a company of Turks. He talked into the orifice, and the machine ground out of its vocal tin foil long sen- tences in its squeaky way. The amazement of the spectators was kept out of sight. They pretended that it was no marvel to them at all, but when the phonograph spoke in Turkish, they could not contain themselves any longer and frankly admitted that they did not understand how the machine had learned the language so quickly, since it had been in the country only two weeks ! Samuel S. Cox. [78] HOUSEKEEPING IN TURKEY The people of Turkey comprise so many races quite unlike one another that housekeeping is unequal and varied according to means and nationality. The houses of the well to do are built on the same general plan — spacious, rambling, with much waste room. A middle hall divides the haramlik, or apartments for women, from the salamlik, or rooms for men. The former is the larger and better arranged portion. In some old buildings is still to be seen won- derful carved woodwork of arabesque patterns on ceiling and side walls, which has now passed out of fashion. The wooden floors are overlaid with rugs, and the furnishing is scant and meager to Western eyes. Multiplied windows are prettily hung with gauzy curtains that hide dreary iron lattices through which eyes, outside or in, must not peer too curiously. [79] Under Sunny Skies A wide, low divan, made gay with Broussa silk or French chintz, runs round every room against the wall ; and as bedsteads are unknown, it is spread with mattresses and quilts at night, making a comfortable bed. All bedding is rolled up and kept in presses through the day. Square cushions are tossed about and piled away in corners ; and on a sofa the wife — few Turks have more than one — sits in the place of honor among draperies and soft cushions. Small tables of cedar and pearl stand here and there, holding perhaps an ash tray, a few cups, or a bunch of flowers ; but there are no pretty trifles to adorn the rooms — no vases, no pictures on the walls. These lead to idolatry and are forbidden by the prophet. Though the Mohammedans possess curios that would dehght an American heart, — china, tapestries, armor, etc., — they are kept packed away in boxes and rarely exhibited. There is no one place for eating, and dinner may be served wherever caprice or convenience orders it ; sometimes overlooking the street or in the walled garden. The party sit crosslegged on cushions round one of the low tables, to which dishes in courses are brought on copper trays. [80] Housekeeping in Turkey Thick soup begins the feast. The lady of highest rank dips her spoon in it and invites the next below her to follow. The chief dish is pilaf. a mixture of stewed rice and game. Bits of Turkish Interior meat, cut in the kitchen and boiled with vege- tables, come on in succession. The stranger finds it impossible to reach the deft and skillful neatness with which the Oriental manages to dine without knife or fork. [81] Under Sunny Skies Wine is never seen. Sweets come between the courses and after dinner; in fact these, with cigarettes, are two luxuries always in order, at once food and recreation. The harem is the center of the world to the home-keeping Turk, who never emigrates nor wishes to travel beyond hearing of the muezzin's call to prayer. Eastern women do not care for privacy, and all of one household gather there with the children. In patriarchal fashion, several generations abide under one roof. It is the law^ of custom, rigid and binding as any law, that men must work and w^omen must not. The slave girl seems to do little but embroider and hold herself ready for the trifling service of her mistress. Abundant space, sun- shine, and ease are the requirements of the harem. The bath is a suite of three rooms. The first is one made of stone or marble, lighted from above, and very warm with furnace heat. Hot and cold water at pleasure are turned into reser- voirs, where rubbing and soaking are prolonged indefinitely. The second apartment contains lounges and sofas. In the third or outer chamber are soft couches and downy wraps, where there [82] Housekeeping in Turkey is long repose; where preserves' and sherbet may be served, and much time is spent. Even the poorest houses have some sort of bath room, where the women of the household gossip and smoke away their mornings, undis- turbed by letter writing or newspapers. The house itself is of minor importance in the land of the fig tree, where nine months of the 3^ear one may live in rose gardens or sun-bright kiosks made of lattices and trailing vines. As in all hot countries building is for the summer, and winter is ignored, the houses are poorly heated, and when fountains are rimmed with ice, and racking winds blow, it is in vain that one tries to keep warm over a handful of coals or by hud- dling in a fur blanket. When cold days come, in rooms where there is much luxury there is little comfort; and in palaces with lofty ceilings and mosaic floors one sighs and shivers, remembering warm old base-burners and open grates glowing with anthracite. A large brazier of burnished metal — often an elegant ornament — is in general use as a heater. Partly filled with wood ashes and burning char- coal, it still is a scant contrivance in a frosty day. [83] Under Sunny Skies For supplying the table there is a monthly allowance made to a steward, who goes to market, attends to details, and usually is honest and capable. The kitchen is a roomy building detached from the mansion and is of stone, including the floors. A range, heated by charcoal, has grates on the top, where roasts are laid and boiling and stewing go on. There are few utensils compared with ours, but plenty of hand work instead of patent machines ; copper and brass platters are shining bright, and cleanliness without order prevails. If the cook is a woman, supplies are passed through a revolving door by the steward, so that her face, usually old and ugly, often jet black, may not be seen by mortal man. Do not attempt housekeeping unless you have the gift of tongues. Your cook may come from any country between the White Nile and the Danube. Your maid may be Armenian, Bul- garian, Maltese ; your porter from Herzegovina ; and the various dealers in curious things, native Turks or peddlers, from regions beyond the Caucasus. How are you to treat v/ith them except in pantomime? [84] Housekeeping in Turkey It is amazing to see the quickness with which they catch your meaning, especially when you are paying four times the actual worth of the article offered for sale. Poultry and vegetables are cheap, fruit abundant, strawberries delicious — ah, those strawber- ries ! I taste them yet. But do not look for good butter in Constantinople, nor sigh for Jersey cream. They are not to be had. In- stead of these daily comforts, be satisfied with grapes like those of Eshcol, long, yellow melons equal to our best cantaloupes, and a drink made of pomegranate juice cooled with snow from the mountains over- looking the Marmora. There seems none so poor but he may have a servant. A story is told of a traveler to Stam- boul among the one hundred thousand daily [8s] Under Sunny Skies crossing Galata Bridge. It is the place where beggars most do congregate, and the stranger dropped a gold piece into the hand of a wretched mendicant, instead of the small copper coin he intended for alms. The traveler soon discovered his mistake, and after business hours were ended — begging is a genteel profession in the East — he inquired the way, and with the help of a native found the dreary lodging of the wretched beggar. A knock at the door brought a servant to open it. After a few moments the polite Oriental appeared, shorn of his rags, in loose, flowing gown and slippers. The blunder was explained, the suave pauper accepted the copper piece, returned the gold lira, and, apparently satisfied, courteously salaamed his visitor away. Hotels are usually kept by Greeks. In almost any of the large cities you may order an English, French, or Turkish dinner, and each will be excellent in its own way. The old names that can never die come to base uses here. Demosthenes silently blacks your boots ; Themistocles stands behind your chair at table ; and Leonidas holds the narrow pass [86] Housekeeping in Turkey between the kitchen and dining room. Worse than this, Euphrosyne, with her bang in httle tins, brings your brass pitcher of hot water, and Aglaia and ThaHa impose their cheap broideries and counterfeit coins on the unsuspecting tourist. Among them sometimes appear pure Attic features — faces Hke those sculptors must see in their dreams. The young girls go bareheaded, and their knotted hair and fillet of shining cord give the final suggestion of the models sought for the ancient marbles. Such picturesque heads I have never seen where there is no Greek blood. Mrs. Lew Wallace. [87] IN THE FIG COUNTRY N eating figs in my own country how little I had thought of the swarthy, turbaned heads that had bent over them in the growing, gathering, and packing of the fruit ! But since visiting that wild country of Asia Minor w^here figs grow, I shall nevermore eat them without seeing again the great trees laden with fruit, the camel drivers, the porters, and the numerous picturesque men, women, and children who take part in preparing and sending the figs to us of the Western world. In visiting the temples of Ephesus in Asia Minor, the sight of the large trees laden with figs here and there along the way led us farther on into the fig country itself, Avhich is the valley of the Meander River — that winding stream w^hose name has the significance of devious ways the whole world over. It "meanders" in and out, [88] In the Fig Country skirting a valley of fifty miles, and this stretch of country is the heart of the most celebrated fig district in the world. It was a surprise to find a raihvay running through this district. We took our seats at Smyrna in shining new cars, cushioned with blue plush and decorated with mirrors. This Ottoman railroad through the fig country is very recent, and all the appointments are luxuriously new. It w^as easy to realize that we were in a country where railroads are not common, for, looking from the windows, we saw long trains of camels laden with bags of figs and bundles of Ushak carpets, led by Turkish drivers. Far off w^re bare and treeless mountains, and with curious stone bridges over the ravines. The country here has long been the haunt of brigands, and as it is said to be unsafe to pass unescorted, I felt a little alarm, although the possibility of being carried off to one of these mountain heights was lessened by the security of a modern railway train. [89] A Brigand wild gorges Under Sunny Skies But the brigands had recently attacked the train. We were told the story by a gentleman who lived in Smyrna. When the brigands learned that a railway was to be put through their province, by which strangers could safely pass through their country without paying them the usual enforced toll, they became highly indig- nant. After watching several trains flying past, their indignation rose to such a height that they resolved to attack one. Back in their mountain lairs, overlooking the odious railway, they held several noisy consulta- tions as to the best way to stop a train. One suggested throwing a strong rope around the loco- motive and stopping it as one would a buffalo. Another, had discovered that it was the fire in the engine which made the thing go, and he offered to spring upon the engine as it passed and dash a pail of water upon the fire. But an older and wiser Turk, doubting whether either of these methods of stopping a train would avail, gave orders to pile great stones upon the track ; and this was what the brigands did. The engine driver of the oncoming train between Smyrna and Ayasoluk, seeing the stone [90] In the Fig Country barricade before him, stopped just in time. The brigands concealed behind the stones then sprang out, jumped upon the footboards, and forced the guard to unlock the doors of the compartments, whereupon they proceeded to rob the screaming passengers. The guard, however, being a cool little English- man, had a happy thought. While the robbers were busy with their prey inside the carriages he ran along the train and locked every door. Then climbing upon the engine, he quickly reversed if and started the train back to Smyrna at such a rate of speed as the people in that leisurely country had never before dreamed possible. The brigands, startled at the movement of the train, left their victims and leaned, shouting and shaking their fists with rage, from every window. " Stop it ! stop it ! " they screamed, as the train flew past every station. " The thing can go back- ward ! Who would have thought it ? Stop it ! " When Smyrna was reached the brigands were promptly given into the hands of the police and led off to jail. " Mashallah ! " they said wonderingly, one to another, as they were led away, " how sliould we [91] Under Sunny Skies know that the thing could go backward as well as forward ? " Since then the brigands have contented them- selves with the old way of " holding up " the unwary traveler on foot or on horseback, and make no more attempts to stop railway trains. The men we saw along the way looked very little like brigands, though the Turks and even the Greeks in their native garb always appear to us more or less fierce. There were many flocks of sheep among the rocks, with herdsmen in baggy trousers tending them, and an occasional Greek in the same baggy trousers on a tiny donkey. Green rushes grew in the marshes where buffalo wallowed, and numerous storks flew about. At Ayasoluk, where we alighted, were huge nests of these storks built in rows among the ruined towers and walls. It is at Ayasoluk that the fig country begins, although it is not until one reaches the Meander valley farther on that the whole country is given up to the cultivation of the fruit. A mountain road of steep grade rises beyond Ayasoluk, giving beautiful backward glimpses of the far-famed har- bor of Smyrna as the train winds in and out of [92] In the Fig Country the spurs of the Salatin Mountains. Below are the towers of ruined Ephesus, and far away in the blue distance of sea shines the island of Samos. The mountain grade crossed, the valley on the other side is reached and the beautiful fig orchards appear. The peculiar quality of the soil along the Meander River is what makes this so rich a fig-growing district. The deep loam has the property of retaining moisture a long time — a valuable quality in the hot summers, which are likely to sap the life of the trees. Strange to say, the strong green leaves of a fig tree retain their strength and color long after the tree has received its deathblow\ It is only when the fruit should mature and does not that the fig grower knows that his tree is becoming stunted, or is dying for want of moisture. In this land of no forests, where olive and fig are almost the only trees one sees, a fig orchard in full, glossy leaf and laden with fruit is a most refreshing sight. Though the trees bear fruit in the early summer from the buds of last year, it is in the autumn, from the second crop, that the largest harvest is gathered. [93] Under Sunny Skies The figs of this region are very large, weighing sometimes even as much as four ounces. They are short and plump, filled with a whitish pulp in a center of red, and dripping with amber drops, which are like honey in appearance, but not in taste. Indeed, the first taste of a ripe fig is dis- appointing; the stranger at first rarely likes the insipid flavor of the fresh fruit, though he often learns in time to be fond of it. To me, however, the fresh fig always remained a mere mass of tasteless pulp. Unlike apples, pears, plums, and cherries, figs must not be picked from the branches and the tree must not be shaken to dislodge the ripe fruit. When the figs are ready they drop to the ground without aid, and lie as they fall, almost ahvays unbroken, in spite of their size and weight. They must be picked up at once, as they spoil even in one day after falling. During the ripening of the figs the orchards are very carefully watched against thieves. Little beds or scaffoldings of rushes are constructed among the orchards, whereon the watchers of the fig gardens lie with sticks and knives and daggers short and long, with which to punish the intruders. [94] In the Fie Cou ntry Very picturesque are these old Turks who guard the ripening figs, their turbaned heads sticking up from over the barricades and their wide belts bristling with weapons. It is interesting to see men go from tree to tree and toss up little necklaces of green figs, strung upon a cord, until they alight among the branches, where they are allowed to hang. These are only the bitter and worthless fruit of the wild fig trees, but the Turks have a belief that they possess the peculiar property of preventing the cultivated figs from falling from the trees before they are fully ripe. No tree, therefore, is left with- out its little necklace of wild figs. The natives are so imbued with this belief that when the wild crop fails they will pay large prices for a few of the wild figs to hang upon their trees. [95] A Fig Orchard Under Sunny Skies When the ripe figs are fast falling to the ground the fig orchard presents a scene so busy, and at the same time so picturesque, that if one has once seen it one can never forget it. The men, women, and children are turned into the gardens to gather the fruit from the ground. With large rush baskets they go from tree to tree, bending, gathering, carrying, laughing, and chatting, their various-colored Oriental robes making brilliant patches of color under the dark shade of the trees. Most of this part of the work is done by the women, and it is surprising what heavily laden baskets they can carry. They often wear the loose Turkish trousers tied in at the ankles, and on wrists, arms, necks, and waists they string orna- ments of gold, silver, and other metal. Beside them are pretty little dark-eyed children, some of whom are old enough to help their mothers gather the figs. The trousers worn by the men in this region are very full and very short — often not longer than a loin cloth. This makes the stockinged legs, down to the slippered feet, appear very long. A wide, loose sash extends up under the armpits. [96] In the Fig Country Away from the shade of the trees a place is arranged under the full glare of the hot sun for drying the figs. Long platforms of earth, raised about six inches high, with little paths between them, are strewn with rushes, and on these are placed single layers of the ripe figs. At first they touch each other, but in the hot sun they soon shrivel until they are far apart. When the dry- ing is completed the figs are carried in bags to Smyrna, there to be prepared for shipment to all parts of the world. It is in the carrying of the figs to Smyrna, across the stone bridges and over the mountain gorges, that the camels and camel men play so prominent a part. Long trains of the great, ugly beasts are laden with goat-hair bags and driven by their owners to the stations. From the peaks [97] Carrying Figs Under Sunny Skies of the saddles or under their necks hang the peculiar bells worn by the camels. These are a series of bells, one within the other, the second bell forming the clapper for the first, the third for the second, and so on down to the last tiny bell. The sound of these rude bells is like that of a doleful tom-tom rather than a musical tinkle ; it Sorting Figs is almost the only sound in a train of hundreds of camels, whose soft, pad-like feet make no noise upon the stones. Formerly the bags of figs were transported all the way by camels, but since the introduction of the railway they are thus carried to the stations only, and are thence transported in freight cars. Eleanor Hodgens. [98] FROM TANGIER TO TETUAN At two o'clock on the morning of the eighteenth of June, 1888, we emerged from the deep shade of the eucalyptus avenue leading to our garden gate, and rode by starlight down the steep and rocky paths of pretty, villa-studded Mount Washington, and along that roughest of roads which leads into Tangier. It is by no means an easy ride during the day- time ; and now^ in comparative darkness, and with so long a journey before us as to make it necessary to hasten, the less said ot it the better. It was a relief when we reached Tangier. After this the road is fairly good, most of the way. We do not enter the gates, but pass through the great market place just outside the town, now crowded with the recumbent forms of sleeping Moors wrapped in their large brown or white hooded cloaks. We canter along the seashore for some distance, and then the road strikes inland across broad plains. LofC. [99] Under Sunny Skies As the day broke, a lovely scene gradually developed before our eyes. The plain through which we were riding was watered by a little river, which we must have crossed at least twenty times during our journey. Its winding course could be traced far away into the distance by the luxuriant masses of oleanders, with great clusters of pink flowers in full bloom, which lined its banks. In the distance were the bluest of moun- tains ; and at that early hour the spaces between them were filled up with thick, solid-looking masses of white mist, forming in one place what looked like Niagara Falls on a gigantic scale. As the sun mounted higher, and the beautiful vapors gradually fled before his beams, the land- scape began to be enlivened by living figures. Little groups of Moors, guiding donkeys laden with apricots, figs, or vegetables for the Tangier market, crossed the water, threading their way in and out among the great oleander bushes. Now and then we met a few camels toiling slowly along with ungainly motion and ostrich-like poise of head and neck, all making the usual mendacious pretense of being overladen. Sometimes we saw a flock of sheep drinking at the river, and the [loo] From Tangier to Tetuan brown-skinned shepherds gave us a friendly good morning in their harsh, guttural language. Larks were mounting in all directions and treating us to a concert overhead ; while others were running tamely along the path just in front of the horses' feet. In one place was an immense patch of yellow flowers of two shades, extending over several acres. The rich tints were dazzling against the deep blue background of mountains. We did not pass near a human habitation of any kind until we came to the halfway stopping place, the foiidak — a large, whitewashed, flat- roofed caravansary, with colonnades of Moorish arches, like cloisters, surrounding a square in- closure for horses, and with a very strong outer door, closed at night as a protection against the wild Riff tribes and other barbarous neighbors. In this dirty, unfurnished building, travelers who are unequal to the fatigue of riding the whole distance in one day are obliged to spend the night ; and unless they bring with them tents, bedding, and provisions, they are likely to spend it uncom- fortably enough. [lOl] Under S unny Skies I We were riding straight through, and only stayed at the fondak long enough to prepare and drink some delicious Moorish coffee. By this time the weather was very hot ; and not long after leaving the fondak we were glad to off- saddle and ^ take a long rest of sev- eral hours in a delightfully shady spot. The usual pink forest of oleanders bordered here a little stream which widened out into a pool ; and we sat ensconced among the roots of a large old olive tree, looking up into the great branches that stretched all across the water, and idly watching the blue sky through the gray-green foliage, [102] From Tangier to Tetuan Very reluctantly we departed from this enchant- ing spot. From Tangier to Tetuan the distance is forty-five miles, and there was still a good bit of the way before us. Whoever is not within the gates of Tetuan by sundown has to remain outside till next morning ; for those portals are rigorously closed all night to guard against the possible attacks of the Riffs. Once closed, no amount of backsheesh avails to effect an entrance until the next morning. Now comes the most wearisome part of our ride ; for steep, rugged paths oblige us to proceed slowly and cautiously. Fortunately our animals — natives of this land of roughest roads — are sure-footed, and step up and down the steepest of rocky staircases like cats. At the highest point of the pass a turn of the road suddenly brings the first view^ of Tetuan before the travelers' eyes ; and very lovely the old Moorish town looks, lying beneath a grand, bold range of mountains, the white w^ashed houses and wall of the town brilliantly illuminated by the sun, and with a wonderful background of dark blue sea. All the buildings are so clearly defined that they seem quite near, though from this point it is two Under Sunny Skies hours' hard riding to the gates. Fortunately the steep rocks soon come to an end ; and then for the rest of the way it is possible to go at a canter. Presently we ride past just such gardens as those which surround Damascus. A beautiful waterfall dashes down over a bank of maiden- hair fern almost into the road ; and the way is continually crossed by noisy water courses, tell- ing of the splendid irrigation which has made the country round Tetuan one vast garden. The town — the African Granada, as it is some- times called — looks more and more beautiful as we approach it. It lies spread out like an ivory fan upon the bright green background of the hill which rises behind it; and facing it — divided from it by green plains w^atered by a broad river — rise the bold and rocky outlines of the Riff Mountains, now dark purple in the late afternoon light. The lofty summits of the mountains are usually hidden in clouds, which give rise to an endless variety of light and shade, reminding one of scenery in the Highlands of Scotland. Their lower slopes are richly cultivated, like all the rest of the countr)^ [104] From Tangier to Tetuan At last, passing through several beautiful Moorish gates, we are in the narrow and ill- paved streets of Tetuan. A Gateway in Tetuan Drinking fountains, set in horseshoe arches, come into view at every turn, the recess of the arch being always filled with a mosaic of tiny tiles of very beautiful subdued colors, while the [105] Under Sunny Skies stone watering trough is carved in some good and appropriate design. High overhead large pink snapdragons grow luxuriantly on the whitewashed walls of the houses. Many of the dwellings have exquisitely carved doors, which must be several hundreds of years old ; the most beautiful are invariably those which are dropping to pieces with age. The mosque doors especially are marvels of patient work and delicate finish, and the tempting peeps through them into dim interiors made us long for more than the furtive glance we could take in passing. But the Moors here are fanatical, and to stop and look in, even from across the street, would give offense. On the expulsion of the Moors from Granada, many of them came to Tetuan ; and in several families the keys of the old homes in Spain, brought away by their ancestors, are still kept as heirlooms. We met one man who is a descend- ant of Boabdil, and who has in his possession the key of the gate through which his ill-fated ancestor passed out of the Alhambra for the last time. The tile-maker's trade is hereditary in one family, who no doubt make the tiles to-day in [io6] From Tangier to Tetuan exactly the same manner as they were made long ago for the Alhambra. The little stars, crosses, triangles, squares, and other beautiful forms are cut out with a knife while the paste is soft; and although little blocks of wood are the only guide used, all the patterns fit accurately one into another. In the town a magnificent house was building for a rich Moor. All the courts, floors, staircases, galleries, and dados are inlaid with these little tiles in the greatest variety of patterns, and the ceilings and doors are exquisitely carved and painted in old-fashioned geometrical designs. Annie Martin. [^07] ACROSS THE DESERT Resolving to see the Sahara under the most characteristic circumstances, I went with a very small caravan, in the summer. I had undergone much exposure in other parts of Africa, and did not expect to be greatly incommoded ; but I found that desert travel, to which I had not been accustomed, was even worse than forest travel, with which I was familiar. I was mounted on a mahari, or fnaharry, which is to all other camels what a horse is to an ox. The animal which I rode was capable of travel- ing a hundred miles a day, which is about four times what the ordinary camel is good for. And with all the frightful traveling, under a burning sun, this maharry of mine — he was honored with the name of Ali — was the most abstemious beast I ever saw. He ate next to nothing, and to my positive knowledge he went fifteen days on the march without drinking a drop of water. [io8] Across the Desert I My camel driver told me that in the winter time Ali drank no water at all, but obtained enough moisture from the grass which grows at that season of the year on some favored portions of the desert. The Arabs may well say, as they do, that the maharry has " the stomach of a rabbit." I had no sooner started out than I had occa- sion devoutly to wish that I had the maharry's faculty of going without water. I saw the drink- ing water for the journey put into bags made of skins. These skins had a repulsive appearance to me, and one look at them was quite enough to cure me of any thirst which I had at the time. We rode out upon the burning desert. Before I had gone far, I felt as if I were in the midst of a fiery furnace. My face burned, my head ached, my throat was parched ; it seemed as if some terrible hot weight had been laid upon my shoulders. I then had recourse to one of the water sacks, which was grudgingly opened for me by an attend- ant. The water was very warm and it had taken, as I knew it must take, a disgusting taste in the inside of this receptable. [109] Under Sunny Skies I turned away unable to drink, and rode on. My maharry's long, rapid gait shook me up and added to my discomfort. The thirst increased. I knew that I must drink or die. Once more I brought the caravan to a halt, while I demanded water. I was the only Euro- pean in the little expedition, and the Arabs were not inclined to be over-civil to me. " By the sword of the prophet," said the Arab who carried my water bag, " I give you to drink, and you will not drink. Do you wish to mock me again ? " In my weakness and desperation, I forgot my dignity and the discipline of the caravan and begged the man, quite humbly, to give me water. He did so; and this time I drank as copiously as I dared of the ill-tasting and ill-smelling water. By and by I was informed that a well was not far away, and my heart leaped up at the news. But alas! I had had no experience with Saharan " wells." This one proved to be a shallow hole in which stood a little very dirty and brackish water, still more unpleasant to me than the contents of our water skins. [no] ! Across the Desert As we went on, Ali began, for the first tmie in forty-eight hours, to show some signs of agitation. For a long time it had seemed to me that he was a creature utterly without thought or sensibility ; he plodded along in such an unmoved, heedless way through the intense heat that he appeared to be a mere machine. But now his alarmed attention was riveted upon something in the far distance. The camel drivers noticed it, and began to make clamorous exclamations in their own lan- guage. I could see nothing but a sort of added murkiness overspreading the brazen horizon in the southwest. [Ill] Under Sunny Skies It was this murkiness which the apparently unconscious AH had been the first to perceive ; and it was nothing more nor less, as the Arabs now assured me, than an approaching simoom. We could do nothing but prepare for it. The head camel driver told me that it was useless to dismount and prostrate ourselves, for our state would be but aggravated by the heat of the ground and the tendency of the sand in this region to whirl along the earth during a simoom and heap up into drifts. We must simply turn our camels' tails to the storm, close our eyes and nostrils, catch a bit of breath now and then inside the hand held clasped over the mouth, and wait for it to pass. He had hardly completed his directions, and I my preparations, before the simoom was upon us. It was a whirling fire, a pouring rain of flame. It wrapped me within and without, like a burning blanket. In spite of all my precautions, the stinging, choking particles of sand were in my nose, were in my mouth, were in my throat. My breath came in hard gasps, like the spasms of an asth- matic patient. At one moment, when it seemed [112] Across the Desert to me that I must fall fainting to the scorched earth, I had a momentary sense as if I were being fused with the hot sand into molten glass ! I have only a dim idea of how I came out of it, or how Ali and I resumed the march. I heard him groaning and whining during the storm ; but the next that I clearly recollect was observing my maharry plodding with long, swinging steps across the desert, impassive and mechanical, as if nothing had happened, while I was frantically begging the man at the water skin for another drink. When I reached El Golea my curiosity concerning the desert in summer was satisfied to the fullest extent. Joseph Malbrinche. ["3] KILIMA-NJARO In the year 1848 a pioneer German missionary was traveling into the interior of east equatorial Africa from Mombasa. When he was about a hundred and fifty miles from the coast, he was startled by a mysterious appearance in the west- ern sky — an area of dazzling whiteness that pre- sented itself to his vision through a break in the clouds. The pious missionary was so affected by the phenomenon that he immediately fell on his knees and recited the second verse of the one [114] Kilima-Njaro hundred and eleventh Psahii, — " The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein." Forty-one years later, in April, 1889, I wit- nessed the same spectacle under similar con- ditions. I was conducting the New York World expe- dition in quest of news of Mr. Stanley and the Emin Pasha relief expedition into Masailand. We were forming camp one cloudy evening on the Lanjora Plain, an open, prairie-like country, ten days' march from the coast, when some of my blacks uttered exclamations of astonishment and shouted to attract my attention. They pointed to a parting in the clouds to the westward, and there, apparently suspended in the sky and having no connection with the earth, was the same celestial phenomenon that had been revealed to Rebmann in 1848. It was in this starthng manner that I caught my first glimpse of KiKma-Njaro. This grand new mountain, old and hoary in years, but new to us, new to the geographers, has a fashion of revealing itself in this weird, mysterious manner to the traveler proceeding toward it from the east. ["5] Under Sunny Skies A vast snowy mountain under a tropical sun is a violent disturber of the elements of the air. The warm, moist monsoons from the Indian Ocean on the way across Africa wage perpetual warfare with the intrusive arctic cold of the upper slopes of Kilima-Njaro. The chilling influence of the big glaciers and vast fields of snow on the mountain top condenses the coast clouds and makes them so heavy with moisture that they lodge against the lower slopes in dense, impene- trable banks. Even when the sky above the plains immedi- ately around its base is clear and blue, the great body of the mountain is nearly always concealed behind heavy masses of cloud and mist. Yet its snowy crown, which has been the cause of these disturbances, may be visible above the clouds. It is apparently severed from the earth, and creates an impression of something suspended in the air. Kilima-Njaro is a remarkable mountain. It is a huge mass a hundred and fifty miles in circum- ference, with two distinct peaks, or cones, situated about twenty miles apart. The higher peak and the more perfectly formed cone is Kibo ; the other is Kimawenzi. [ii6] Kilima-Njaro Kibo is said by Dr. Meyer, the German explorer, who, with a companion, ascended it in October, 1889, to be nineteen thousand seven hundred and twenty feet high. Its summit is always crowned with snow. Kimawenzi is a volcanic cone that has been shattered into a mass of jagged points and awful canons by a series of tremendous explosions. Its height appears to the eye to be about two thou- sand feet less than the sister peak. I did not make an attempt to reach the summit of Kilima-Njaro, but I ascended it for about ten thousand feet, or over half its height. We left the dry, withering heat of the plains at its base and entered what appeared to us to be a vast orchard of quince trees, bearing a hard and almost tasteless fruit. Beyond the quince orchard we plunged into a tangled wilderness of rank grass and dense thicket, through which herds of wild elephants had trampled broad paths. Pursuing our way along the roads made by the elephants for about three miles, we entered a well- trod path on which were seen the imprints of naked human feet. This path led us into a peculiarly dense patch of jungle, and in the most [117] Under Sunny Skies thorny and impenetrable part of it was a formi- dable barrier of logs and spiky branches. We had reached an East African "gate." It was the entrance gate or portal to one of the little Chagga states, of which there are no less than fourteen on the broad lower slopes. Within the gate stood a savage sentinel, armed with a big, gleaming spear and a buffalo-hide shield, curiously painted in red, white, and black. He greeted us pleasantly because our faces were white, but more particularly because he knew white men to be rich and generous as compared with Africans, and that we were not unlikely to bestow upon him a small present of beads or cloth. We crept through an opening in the barrier, and for the next few miles our way led through luxuriant plantations of bananas, fields of cas- sava — here called mohogo — maize and millet. Now we threaded our way through narrow, wind- ing lanes, between neatly kept dracaena hedges and mossy stone walls, — lanes as charming as the green lanes of rural England. Again we passed through little parks with shade trees and irrigating ditches bubbling across [ii8] Kilima-Njaro the greenest sward imaginable. We seemed to have reached a civiHzed country, where the culti- vation of the soil was carried on with considerable skill and care. This cultivated area is anywhere from two to six miles or more wide. When on the plains you can see the area of this populated zone encircling the vast waist of the mountain like a belt. It is easily distinguished by its brighter shade of green. As we neared the upper edge of the inhabited zone we were surprised and delighted to find in the hedgerows the homely and familiar black- berry, and to smell the perfume of the sweet southernwood. Soon we had left the lanes and banana groves behind and were again in the wilderness. This time, however, it was a wilderness of ferns, or bracken, from six to ten feet high. Again we were walking along paths that had been beaten down by elephants, and a short dis- tance back we had passed a group of natives who were examining with lugubrious visages the destruction that had been wrought by the great tuskers in a field of beans the night before. [X19] Under Sunny Skies Beyond the bracken, at an elevation of eight thousand feet we passed through a belt of forest, the trees of which are saturated with the moisture of the daily rains and the perpetual mists to such a degree that they are covered with mosses, lichens, ferns, and orchids to the very tips of the highest branches. We paused at one tree and counted no less than nine distinct varieties of parasites growing on its trunk. The sunshine seldom penetrates the banks of mists in which these upper forests are enveloped, and consequently the tints are pale and delicate shades of green. As we pursued our course for the next two thousand feet, we found great quantities of heather — both the common heather of the Scotch moors and the giant or -tree heather. The giant heather attains to the dimensions of a sizable tree, with a trunk two feet in circumference. Our Zanzibaris, a few of whom we had taken with us to carry food and traps, began to com- plain of the cold. We were enveloped in a raw, cold mist that threatened to wet us to the skin. We had hoped to obtain a good view of the surrounding country, but could see nothing five [120] Kilima-Njaro hundred yards away. We reached the edge of another width of forest. This was as high as we intended to go. We sat down and lunched off the biscuits, dates, and cold goat mutton we had brought with us, and shivered with cold as we ate ; nor could we build a fire, for every piece of wood to be found was sodden with moisture and coated with moss. The teeth of our men chattered, and they begged us to go no higher lest they should perish [121] Under Sunny Skies with the cold. Yet we were but ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and but a scant eight thousand above the plains where the rays of the tropic sun were withering the grass. On a previous occasion a friend of mine had ascended to a height of fifteen thousand feet. This was above the snow line. To his astonish- ment, he found the footprints of elephants in the snow, proving that the Kilima-Njaro elephant is quite a mountaineer. His Zanzibaris, who had never come in contact with snow before, and had the vaguest ideas of what the white substance on the summit of the mountain might be, whooped and shouted with amazement as they picked it up and examined it. They were afraid to taste it, until their leader proved by eating some himself that there was nothing harmful in it. Thomas Stevens. [122] HUNGARIAN LIFE " May God bless thee ! " said a fine-looking, gray-haired old gentleman as I jumped out of the train at Debreczin, accompanying the words with a kiss on each cheek. Thirty years before I had visited him as a young student, and ten years ago I had been with him again. When I was first there Hungary had just passed through a bloody and unsuccessful struggle for liberty. Her leading statesmen and orators and generals had been banished, or impris- oned, or executed on the scaffold. Every house- hold was saddened by the calamities of war and crushed under the incessant exactions and oppres- sion of the Austrians. I greeted my friend warmly and followed him to an old-fashioned, muddy, open barouche, with four wild horses and a driver looking like a bandit in slouched hat and feather. Away we dashed like mad through the streets, almost running over the operatic-looking peasants who crossed on the walks. ["3] Under Sunny Skies The town seemed to me like a collection of tents, with wide muddy paths between. There was scarcely a house above one story in height, and all were built of stone or white stucco. Stately figures, with long hair and swarthy marked faces, and eyes that glittered even in business chaffering, were about the markets. Some were clad in long sheepskin robes reaching to the knees, with the wool outside, and wore black slouched Hungarian Life hats and feathers ; others in a highly convenient costume for hot weather, which looked like a linen nightgown, and top-boots. The markets, which were held in the open street, contained everything which could be used by an agricultural population, and the fruits and products were like those of an American market. The gentlemen we met, "even the clergymen, wore braided and slashed military dark frock coats, high boots, and slouched hats. Every one was very polite. My companion was continually saying, " Your humble servant,'' and dofifing his hat. At length we dashed into the gate of my friend's house and entered what seemed a crypt, with stone arches meeting in the center of each room, the vaults being covered with plaster and frescoed — a cool, shaded mansion for hot weather, and, like the others, of only one story. I had usually occupied the parlor as a guest room, but now was put under a vault toward the kitchen. My host's study was the sitting room, where he studied and smoked and received his guests and patients. [125] Under Sunny Skies At an early hour we were gathered for the bountiful Hungarian dinner, which was served in a kind of porch paved with stone. First, the delicious soup, of course ; then cut-up pieces of roast meat, with preserves, handed round; then pieces of roast fowl or chicken, with red pepper ; and various Magyar dishes utterly indescribable, with a great variety of nice puddings and fruit — among the dishes, one of boiled ears of corn or maize. At this dinner there was a peculiar enter- tainment. The hostess looked out into the courtyard — into which the room opened — and suddenly called something like "Janoska!" In marched, with a dignified, dainty step, a large, tame stork. The lady said something to him, and he threw his head over on his back, looking up toward the ceiling, and clapped his bill in the most extraordi- nary manner. Then he received a bit of food and retired with a kind of bow and an equally dignified manner, and we heard him clapping in the courtyard. Our hostess said this was his mode of saluting the powers above; she thought perhaps he was [126] Hungarian Life worshiping ! He had been an inmate of the household for more than ten years. The young ladies whom we met at dinner were dressed like young ladies in America and seemed to be engaged in almost the same pursuits. One of the children was busy in filling up a stamp album and was very eager to get our American postage stamps. It struck me there and in other famiKes that the Magyars exceed even the Americans in their indulgence of little children. These eat and drink precisely as their seniors do. If any one canon of health in the eastern states and England is settled, it is that a child should not eat his heavy meal late in the day. The dinner should be in the middle of the day, and the supper should be light and not later than six or seven in the evening. But in one castle, where I had a delightful visit, the noble-born children took a supper of several courses, with wine, at nine o'clock, and then went straight to bed. The result was that while I was there a little girl had gastric fever; but the physician never thought of connecting the disease with the familv's eating habits, and I Under Sunny Skies presume when the child recovered she had pre- cisely the same indulgences. It is this ignorance of sanitary laws which is destroying the Magyar race. There is a dread- ful mortality of infants — the births, also, barely exceed the deaths. The Hungarian mothers must study sanitary science or in a few generations only Slavonians and Wallachs will be left to inhabit those fertile plains and picturesque valleys. The Hungarian temperament is the most charm- ing and attractive I have ever met with in any country ; it seems to me to combine the best quali- ties of the English and American people. There is a peculiar ardor and enthusiasm about the Magyar which make him entirely different from the German or the Englishman, and at the same time give him something of the stanchness, sin- cerity, and common sense of the Briton. The people are easily carried away by ideas and fancies and are full of fire and passion, but behind it all they have a fund of strong sense which always brings them out right at last in public matters. They have the oldest free polit- ical constitution in Europe. For a thousand years [128] Hungarian Life they have been governed by a Parliament and, to a certain extent, by free institutions. The Hungarian in private life is the best of friends. He values friendship and goes out of the way for it. The men who befriended me thirty years ago are still as warm and faithful as ever. When one visits them it is as if visiting a near relative. It is hard to get away from them. People spend weeks with one another. I have known a party of a dozen, with horses and ser- vants, to come unexpectedly to a castle and to be received as if they belonged to the family. The Magyars are great talkers, and they enjoy the long chats in the balconies over coffee and cigars, or rambling about in their groves and parks. With the excitable nature of the people, and their quick appreciation of fun or oratory, they are constantly passing about good jokes and dramatic stories. They are by nature good talkers, and, like the Americans, they become public speakers very early. Their language is suited to flights of eloquence and poetry and impassioned appeals. I can say for myself that I never listened to human tones so touching, nor to oratory so grand [129] Under Sunny Skies and poetic, as from the celebrated Hungarian orator, Louis Kossuth, although he spoke in a language not his own. The popular music, too, is wonderfully inspir- ing. I often stop to listen to the gypsy melodies. They begin in a low, sad key with slow time, and gradually change into a lively, gay measure, until they end in a cheerful whirl. The airs seem to represent the temperament o f the people. A deep under- tone of sadness runs through the nature of the Magyars and is heard in their poetry; yet it changes very easily into joy and merriment. One of the greatest of their poets, Arany, I have often seen, — a noble man in appearance and in spirit. He died not very [130] Louis Kossuth Hungarian Life long ago, and his loss was felt as that of Long- fellow was here. His poems have been translated into English, with other Hungarian poetry, in a volume published in New York; but the transla- tion was not a good one and did not picture the passio'nate fire and poetic spirit of the original. The son of Arany I have known well, and he has evidently something of the genius of the father. He has read American poetry, and his apprecia- tion of such a difficult thing as Lowell's Biglow Papers was surprising. Even the dialect did not trouble him. As a nation the Magyars have a profound feel- ing for poetry, and the popular songs pass every- where from one person to another. Their greatest orator, Kossuth, appealed to their sentiment inces- santly, and his language was filled with imagery; yet the most effective of their modern orators, Deak, was a man with no imagination and distin- guished for hard logic and close argument. Charles L. Brace. ['3>] SYRIAN SWEETMEATS The food of the people is always an interesting study in foreign lands, especially in Eastern cities where every narrow street displays the queer things that are eaten by the dark-skinned people who live behind its windowless walls and mys- terious courts. There is evidence that the " sweet tooth" is highly developed, for of the heaps of eatables piled in open booths, in street stalls, and in bazaars, nine tenths are, to our palates, sicken- ingly sweet. " Turkish delight " should come first in a descrip- tion of these dainties, for it is the most frequently seen and largely consumed. When fresh and well made it is very palatable. The making of Syrian sweetmeats is not a secret. Much of it is done in the public streets for all to see. In Damascus one fairly stumbles over great bowls of sugar, beaten eggs, cooling arrowroot, and the chopped nuts and seeds used in the manufacture of these sweetmeats. [132] Syrian Sweetmeats On every side one is greeted by the odor of boiling honey and sugar, and by the sound of the sizzUng fat, into which are dropped the fritters so commonly eaten. These fritters of puff paste, usually very greasy, are in every sweetmeat bazaar. They are made in small shapes, with sweet pastes of different colors and kinds sand- wiched between them. Over the top are strewn layers of mashed pomegranate seeds and sugar. No more brilliant pictures can be seen than in the lanes where these comfits are made. Swarthy men and boys, - clad in flowing robes, with gay sashes and turbans, are framed in the open booths, their brown arms deeply buried in great bowls of the whites of eggs which they churn to foaming masses with their hands. Dishes of semiliquid sugar stand near, and beside them various recep- tacles containing the arrowroot, pastes, honey, fruits, and colors ready to be mixed for use. Charcoal fires, over which the sweets are boiling and bubbling, light up the interior ; and on tables in front are trays, bowds, slabs, and jars filled with brilliantly colored goodies. There are lumps formed of cocoanut and honey ; sugared peas, balls of pink sugar on sticks, or Under Sunny Skies festooned on strings ; flat red wheels with nuts ; triangles of white, semitransparent paste, with layers of pistachio between; balls of dark fruit paste stuck full of blanched nuts ; and sections of melon or citron boiled in sugar and dried. Important articles are the flat cakes of various kinds. Often they are round cakes, slightly sweetened with honey, and plentifully strewn with sesame seeds, resembling our canary seeds. This is the sesame and honey cake of the Arabian Nights' tales. There are huge piles of large, crisp hoops of unsweetened dough, baked very brown and sprinkled with these same seeds. They some- what resemble German pretzels, and in Constan- tinople there are stalls devoted entirely to the sale of them. The piles of crisp rings, with the picturesque merchants behind them, form one of the most curious and frequent sights of that city. During the Fast of Ramadan, corresponding somewhat to our Christian Lent, the Moslems fast from sunrise to sunset, after which they spend the night in eating. It is at this season that the ■sweetmeats are devoured in largest quantities. Eleanor Hodgens. [■34] PRONOUNCING YOCABULAEY OF PROPER NAMES, FOREION WORDS, Etc. The pronunciations are, with a few exceptions, those of Webster'' s International Dictionary Explanation of Diacritical Marks a, e, i, 0, II, long ; a, ^, 6, less prolonged ; a, 6, i, 6. u, short; a, e, i, o, u, obscure; far, last, fall, care; term; food, foot; furl; 6 as in for; oi as in oil; ow as in cow ; ch as in chin; g as in get ; n as in linger, link ; ng as in sing ;. th as in thin ; tb as in thine ; n = French nasal ; k = German ch. Achilles (a kir lez) Acropolis (a krop' 6 lis) ^Egean {t je' an) Africa (afrika) Aglaia (a gla' ya) Albanian (alba'nian) Alcibiades (al si bi^ a dez) Alexandria (al' egs an^ dri a) Alhambra (al ham' bra) All (a' lee) Aljibes (SI he' bas) America (a m6r' i ka) Apennines (ap' en ninz) Arabian (a ra' bi an) Arabic (ar' a bik) Arany (Sr' on yi) Areopagus (Sr' e op'' t glis) Armenia (ar me' nl 2l) Asia (a' shi a) Assunta (as soon' ta) Athena (a the' na) Athens (ath' 6nz) Augustus (a giis' tus) Austria (as' tri a) Ayasoluk (i' a st look') Ayeshah (a' e sha or V q sha) Balotte (ba lot' ta) Biglow (big' 16) Boabdil (bo ab dtV) Briton (brif un) Broussa (broos' a) Bulgarian (bool ga' rl an) Burano (boo ra' no) Burgundy (btir' giin di) Byzantine (bi zSn' tin) [135] Under Sunny Skies Csesar (se' zar) Fabric! (fa bre' che) California (kar i for' ni a) Fahrenheit (fa' ren hit) Campania Felix (kam pa' ni a fe' lix) Ferdinand (f er' di nand) Caucasus (ka' ka siis) Centigrade (sen' ti grad) Chagga (chag' ga) Charles (cliarlz) Chianti (ke an' te) Christian (kris' chan) Christmas (kris' mas) Columbus (ko Mni' bus) Constantine (kon' stan tin) Constantinople (kon st3,n'ti no' pi) Cordova (kor' do va) Corinthian (k6 rin' thi an) Crusade (kru sad') Damascus (da mas' kus) Danube (dSn' lib) Deak (da' ak) Debreczin (da bret' sin) Demosthenes (d^ mos' th^ nez) Dio mio (de' 6 me' 6) Easter (es'ter) Eden (e' dn) Edison (ed' i son) Egypt (e' jipt) El Golea (el go la' a) Emin Pasha (a' men pa sha') English (ing' lish) Ephesus (gf e sUs) Eshcol (esh' kol) Etruria (e troo' ri a) Euphrosyne {u fros' i n^) European (ti' r6 pe' an) Festa (fas' ta) Fiesolana (fyes' 6 la' na) Fiesole (fyes' 6 la) Florence (fior' ens) Fondak (f on' dak) Francis (f ran' sis) Furies (fu' riz) Fustanella (fus ta nel' la) Galata (ga' la ta) Gene^alif e (ha ner a lef a) German (jer' man) Goth (goth) Granada (gra na' da) Greece (gres) Haramlik (ha' ram lik) Hebrew (he' broo) Hercules (her' ku lez) Hermes (her' mez) Herzegovina (herf se go ve' na) Homer (ho' mer) Hungarian (hun ga' ri an) Hungary (hiin' ga ri) Hymettus (hi met' iis) Indian (in' di an or in' dyan) Ionic (i on' ik) Irving (er' ving) Isabella (iz' a bgr a) Italian (i tai' yan) Italy (if a li) [ 136 ] Pronouncing Vocabulary Jersey (jer^ zi) Jerusalem (je roo' sa lem) Jew (jti) Juana (hoo a' iia) Jupiter (ju' pi ter) Kibo (krbo) Kilima-Njaro (kir e man' ja ro') Kimawenzi (kim' a wen' zi) Koran (ko' ran or ko ran') Kossuth (kosh' oot) La Cantiva (la kan te' va) La Mezquita (la meth ke' ta) Lanjora (Ian jo' ra) Lebanon (leb' a non) Leonidas (le on' i das) Lira (le'ra) Longfellow (long' fel 16) Louis (loo' is) Lowell (lo' el) Lysippus (li sip' pus) Madrid (ma drid') Magyar (mag' yar or mod' yor^) Maltese (mal tez' or -tes') Margherita (mar ga re' ta) Marmora (mar' mo ra) Mars (marz) Masailand (ma si' land) Mashallah (mash al' la) Meander (me an' der) Mohammedan (mo ham' med an) Mohogo (mo ho' go) Mombasa (mom bas' a) Montenegrin (m5n' ta na' grin) Moor (moor) [ Moslem (moz'lem) Mussulman (mus' siil man) Naples (na'plz) Napoleon (na po' le on) Neapolitan (ne' a pol' i tan) Nebuchadnezzar (neb'ii kadngz'ar) Necci (ne' che) Nero (ne' ro) Nevada (na va' da) Niagara (ni Sg' a ra) Nile (nil) Olympus (o lim'pus) Ottoman (of to man) Parmesan (par m^ zSn') Parnes (par' nez) Parthenon (par' the n5n) Patio (pa' te 6) Pericles (per' i klez) Philip (f il' ip) Piazetta (pyatset'ta) Pilaf (pi laf) Plaza (pla'za) Pompeii (pom pa' ye) Porto delle Donzelle (por' to del li don dzel' la) Puerta (pwer' ta) Ramadan (rSm' a dan') Eebman (reb'man) Riff (rif) Rome (rom) Russian (rush' an) Sahara (sa ha' ra) St. John (sant jon') 137] Under Sunny Skies St. Mark (sant Mark) St. Mary (saut ma' ri) St. Paul (sant pal) St. Theodore (sant the' t dor) Salatin (saF a tin) Samos (sa' mos) San Pietro (san pya' tro) St. Maria rormosa(san'ta mare' a f 6r mo' sa) Saramlik (sa'ramlik) Scotch (skoch) Scotland (skot'land) Septa (sep' ta) Sierra (se er' ra) Signora (s^ nyo' ra) Signorina (se' ny 6 re^ na) Signorine (se' nyo re' n^) Slavonian (sla vo' ni an) Smyrna (smer' na) Sol (sol) Sophocles (sof o klez) Spain (span) Spanish (span' ish) Stamboul (stSni bool') Stanley (stSn'lT) Stromboli (strom' bo 16) Sultana (sul ta' na) Syrian (sir' Ian) Tagus (ta'giis) Tangier (tan jSr') Telemachus (te I6m' a kus) * Tetuan (tef oo an') Thalia (tha IT' a) Themistocles (the mis' tQ klez) Theseus (the' sus) Tiber (ti'ber) Tigliati (te lye a' te) Toledo (to le' do) Torre Annunziata (tOr' rt an- noon tse a' ta) Trajan (tra'jan) Trieste (tre 6st') Tubal (til' bal) Turkey (tur'ki) Tuscany (tils' kani) Ushak (oo shak') Vega (va' ga) Venetian (v^ ne' shQn) Venice (v6n' is) Vesuvius (vS su' vl ta) AVallach (wol' lak) Washburne (wosh' burn) Washington (wosh' ing ton) Wellington (wel' ling tpn) Zanzibari (zan' zl bar' I) [138] JUN3 lyOi UN '^?J902 I COPY DEL. roCAT.DiV, JUN. 2 1902 JUN. 1 :jo2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 650 981 A W^SlAi