Chaloner, that he was by 'no means rich; and I knew nothing of lamentations and confused exhortations to make ready for the the people she was travelling with ; therefore I did not see the dreadful event. The monks, who had risen to sing their matins, necessity of putting myself the least out of the way on her account. terrified by the movements of the earth, ran into my chamber, Still if I had had the smallest idea of her so soon becoming Mrs. armed with crosses and relics, imploring the mercy of Heaven. A Rutledge, the wife of a rich man, and a member of Congress, I prior, whose name was David, and who was considered as a saint, should certainly have dressed myself, and received her in the front was at their head. The sight of these inspired us with little parlour, instead of the nursery, and had nice things for dinner, courage. We proceeded to the church, which was already and invited some of my best people to meet her in the evening.” crowded ; there we remained during the rest of the night, ex

“And not sent for Miss Nancy Risings," interrupted Mary pecting every moment the completion of the prophecy. Jane. “Well, mama, I think we have made a bad business of it; It is impossible to describe the horrors of that night. The and, to say the truth, I was actually ashamed more than once to elements were let loose. The noise of the thunder, the winds, and see the way things were going on. As to the boys, I am glad the rain, the roarings of the enraged sea, the convulsions of the papa is going to send them all to that Boston boarding-school; heaving earth, and the distracted cries of those who felt them. the farther from home, the better for themselves and us; it will selves staggering on the brink of death, were dreadful beyond be such a relief to get rid of them.”

imagination. Never was there such a night! As soon as we apIn the next private confabulation between the mother and prehended that the day was at hand, the altars were prepared, and daughter—"Only think, Mary Jane," said Mrs. Gilmore, “your the priests dressed themselves for mass. Trembling, we lifted up father tells me that the family Mrs. Chaloner was travelling with, our eyes to heaven, and then fell prostrate upon the earth. is one of the very first in Boston, quite at the head of society, The day at length appeared. But what a day! Its horrors immensely wealthy, and living in almost a palace-such people as were more terrible than those of the night. No sooner were the we never had in our house. What a pity we did not know who higher parts of the city a little more calm, than we were struck they were ! we might have derived so much éclat from them. by the outcries which we heard towards the sea. Anxious to What an opportunity we have lost! If Mrs. Chaloner had given discover what passed there, and still expecting nothing but death, me any reason to suppose that her friends could be persons of that we became desperate, and instantly mounting our horses, rode description, I would have invited them all in the evening, and down to the shore. strained every nerve to get some of our most fashionable people Heavens! what a sight! Vessels wrecked in the harbour, the to meet them; and I would have had Carroll and Truelar both ; strand covered with bodies, which had been dashed against the and ice-creams, and blanc-mange, and champagre, and all such rocks by the fury of the waves. Here you saw the brains of things—but how was I to suppose that little Mrs. Chaloner, with some, and the entrails of others; there the palpitating struggles her plain gown and cap, was likely to have made such acquaint- of yet remaining life. You might distinguish the groans of the ances, or to make so great a match ? I wish I had not treated her men, and the shrieks of the women, even through the noise of the quite so unceremoniously ; but I am sure I thought it could never thunder, the roaring of the billows, and the crash of falling houses. be worth while to put myself the least out of the way for her." The sea regarded not either the restraints of men, or the barriers

“ You see, mama,” said Mary Jane,“ in this, as in many other of nature. She no longer knew the bounds which had been set by instances, you have overreached yourself. Your plans never the Almighty. seem to come out well."

That immense mole which, stretching itself out on each hand, "I believe,” replied Mrs. Gilmore, "your father's notions of forms the port, was buried under the tumult of the waves ; and things are, after all, the best, and I shall pay more regard to them the lower parts of the city were so much deluged, that you could in future. Mary Jane, be sure you tell him no particulars of not pass along the streets without danger of being drowned. Mrs. Chaloner's visit.

We found near the shore above a thousand Neapolitan cava.

liers, who had assembled, as it were to witness the funeral obsequies ACCOUNT OF THE EARTHQUAKE AT NAPLES,

of their country. This splendid troop gave me a little courage.

If I die, said Í to myself, it will be at least in good company. November 25th, 1343, given by Petrarch in a letter written to a friend on the ensuing day.

Scarce had I made this reflection, when I heard a dreadful clamour

everywhere around me. The sea had sapped the foundations of A Monk, who was the bishop of a neighbouring island, and held the place where we stood, and it was at this instant giving way. in great esteem for his sanctity and his skill in astrology, had fore. We fled, therefore, immediately to a more elevated ground. Hence told that Naples was to be destroyed by an earthquake on the 25th of we beheld a most tremendous sight. The sea between Naples and November. The prophecy spread such a terror through the city Capræa was covered with moving mountains; they were neither that the inhabitants abandoned their affairs to prepare themselves green as in the ordinary state of the ocean, nor black as in comfor death. Some hardy spirits, indeed, ridiculed those who mon storms, but white. betrayed marks of fear on the approach of a thunder storm ; and The young queen rushed out of the palace, bare-footed, her as soon as the storm was over, jestingly cried out, .See, the pro- hair dishevelled, and her dress in the greatest disorder. She was phecy has failed.'

followed by a train of females, whose dress was as loose and disorAs to myself, I was in a state between fear and hope ; but I derly as her own. They went to throw themselves at the feet of must confess that fear sometimes got the ascendant. Accustomed the blessed Virgin Mary, crying aloud, Mercy! mercy! to a colder climate, and in which a thunder storm in winter was a Towards the close of the day the storm abated, the sea was rare phenomenon, I considered what I now saw, as a threatening calm, and the heavens serene. Those who were upon the land from Heaven.

suffered only the pains of fear; but it was otherwise with those On the eve of the night in which the prophecy was to be ful. who were upon the water. Some Marseilles galleys, last from filled, a number of females, more attentive to the impending evil Cyprus, and now ready to weigh anchor, were sunk before our than to the decorum of their sex, ran hali naked through the eyes, nor could we give them the least assistance. Larger vessels streets, pressing their children to their bosoms. They hastened from other nations met with the same fate in the midst of the to prostrate themselves in the churches, which they deluged with harbour. Not a soul was saved ! their tears, crying out with all their might, “Have mercy, O Lord ! There was a very large vessel, which had on board four hunHave mercy upon us !”

dred criminals under sentence of death. The mode of their punishMoved, distressed with the general consternation, I retired ment had been changed, and they were reserved as a forlorn hope early to the Convent of St. Lawrence. The monks went to rest to be exposed in the first expedition against Sicily. This ship, at the usual hour. It was the seventh day of the moon, and as I which was stout and well built, sustained the shocks of the waves was anxious to observe in what manner she would set, I stood till sunset; but now she began to loosen and to fill with water. looking at my window till she was hid from my sight by a neigh- The criminals, who were a hardy set of men, and less dismayed bouring mountain. This was a little before midnight. The moon by death as they had lately seen himn so near at hand, struggled was gloomy and overcast; nevertheless, I felt myself tolerably with the storm, and by a bold and vigorous defence kept death at composed, and went to bed. But scarce had I closed my eyes, bay till the approach of night. But their efforts were in vain. The when I was awakened by the loud rattling of my chamber windows. ship began to siuk. Determined, however, to put off as far as I felt the walls of the convent violently shaken from their founda- possible the moment of dissolution, they ran aloft, and hung upon tions. The lamp, which I always kept lighted through the night, the masts and rigging. At this moment the tempest was appeased, was extinguished. The fear of death laid fast hold upon me. and these poor convicts were the only persons whose lives were

The whole city was in commotion, and you heard nothing but saved in the port of Naples.

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND ASIA.

ruthless hand of renovation from the building mania of modern

speculators. I would have her to go on till there was not a habita. Mr. George STEPHENS, a lively and active-minded native of tion among her ruins; till she stood, like Pompeii, alone in the the United States, has, within the last eighteen months, published wilderness, a sacred desert, where the traveller might sit down and two sets of travels, giving an account of his rambles in Egypt, meditate alone and undisturbed among the relics of the past. But Idumea, the Holy Land, Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland. | already Athens has become a heterogeneous anomaly; the Grecks The first work, published in 1837, is called “ Incidents of Travel Frenchmen, Italians, Dutchmen, Spaniards, and Bavarians, Rus

in their wild costume are jostled in the streets by Englishmen, in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land;" the second, a

sians, Danes, and sometimes Americans. European shops invite more recent production, bears a similar title, and is concerned purchasers by the side of Eastern bazaars, coffee-houses, and with the other countries named. The travels in Greece, Turkey, billiard-rooms, and French and German restaurants are opened and Russia, precede, in point of time, the travels in Egypt and the all over the city. Sir Pulteney Malcolm has erected a house to Holy Land, though the latter were the first published. Mr. hire near the site of Plato's Academy. Lady Franklin has bought Stephens is an exceedingly agreeable writer, mixing common sense,

land near the foot of Mount Hymettus for a country-seat. Several

Mr. Richmond, an information, and gossip, in a way calculated to carry the reader English gentlemen have done the same.

American clergyman, has purchased a farm in the neighbourhood; along with him; and he is so good-humoured and hearty, that one

and, in a few years, if the.march of improvement' continues, the absolutely enjoys the “Incidents.”

Temple of Theseus will be enclosed in the garden of the palace of In February, 1835, “by a bright starlight, after a short ramble king Otho; the Temple of the Winds will be concealed by a among the Ionian islands,” Mr. Stephens sailed from Zante, “in German opera-house, and the Lantern of Demosthenes by a row a beautiful cutter, of about forty tons, for Padrass,” at the mouth of three story houses.'

“ The first thing we did in of the gulf of Corinth. A storm compelled the navigators to run

Athens was to visit the American Missionary School. Among the into the harbour of Missolonghi, and here Mr. Stephens first extraordinary changes of an ever-changing world, it is not the touched "the soil of fallen, but immortal Greece.” Though debt which the world owes to the mother of science, and the

least that the young America is at this moment paying back the Byron died at Missolonghi, it appeared to our traveller “a cheer citizen of a country which the wisest of the Greeks never dreamed less place," and reminded him “ of Communipaw in bad weather.” of, is teaching the descendants of Plato and Aristotle the elements It had, he says,

no connexion with the ancient glory of Greece, of their own tongue.” no name or place on her historic page;" and, far worse still, After rambling over the Grecian peninsula, visiting Argos, "no hotel where he could get a breakfast." But the brother of Marathon, and the marble quarries of Pentelicus, the storehouse Marco Bozzaris lived here ; and with him lived thc widow and of the immortal sculptors of Athens, he touched, on his way to children of that daring guerilla chief, who fell in the Greek revo. Smyrna, at "Scio's rocky isle," once the most beautiful island in lutionary war. So, with that free and easy manner which seems the Archipelago, now a mass of ruins, and the scene of one of the to come so natural from American travellers, the traveller and his most fearful and bloodiest of the scenes of the Greek revolution, companions introduced themselves to the brother, widow, and the massacre of the inhabitants by the Turks. Indeed, Mr. daughters of Bozzaris, and Mr. Stephens gratified them by Stephens' rambles in Greece are painful to read, because one is promising to send them a copy of the American poet, Mr. Hal. perpetually reminded of that horrible struggle, the Greek revoleck's Marco Bozzaris," a promise which he fulfilled. From lution, and has convincing proofs of how long it takes to erase Missolonghi, the travellers took horse to Lepanto, attempting, by the traces of civil war. In the very outset of his journey he gives the way, to ascend Parnassus, but were deterred by the fear of us an example of the evil which travelling may leave on the mind, banditti. “Every schoolboy,” says Mr. Stephens, “ knows for it requires a somewhat disciplined intellect to travel, in order how hard it is to write poetry, but few know the physical diffi- to extract the good of it. He saw a pyramid of skulls at Missoculties of climbing the mountain itself.” From the harbour of longhi ; and he adds—“. In my after wanderings, I learned to look Lepanto they sailed across the gulf of Corinth to Padrass, which more carelessly upon these things; and, perhaps, noticing everystands at its mouth ; and from thence on horseback they went to where the light estimation put upon human life in the East, learned Corinth, so famous in classical and New Testament history, but to think more lightly of it myself." now in decay and ruins. Onwards they went to Athens, and Unable to get up the gulf of Smyrna, from contrary winas, he drawing near it, " they passed the ruined monastery of Daphne, landed, and engaged a Tartar, who promised to “take me through in a beautifully picturesque situation, and in a few minutes saw

in fourteen hours; and at seven o'clock he was in his saddle, the rich plain of Attica ; our muleteers and Demetrius, with a charged with a dozen letters from captains, supercargoes, and burst of enthusiasm, perhaps because the journey was ended, passengers, whom he left behind waiting for a change of wind. He clapped their hands, and cried out, “Atinæ ! Atinæ !'”

had some adventures on his way; but having arrived at “the Of Athens, so absolutely crammed with matter for consideration queen of the cities of Anatolia, extolled by the ancients as Smyrna and reflection, Mr. Stephens speaks at some length, but we can the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the pride of Asia,” he was soon“ in only give his summary view :

the full enjoyment of a Turkish bath ;" and bursts out with," Oh, “ The sentimental traveller must already mourn that Athens has

these Turks are luxurious dogs. Chibouks, coffee, hot-baths, and been selected as the capital of Greece. Already have speculators,

as many wives as they please! What a catalogue of human enjoyand the whole tribe of improvers' invaded the glorious city; and

ments !" while I was lingering on the steps of the Parthenon, a German, We shall fit over Smyrna, and over his excursion to Ephesus ; who was quietly smoking among the ruins, a sort of superintendant,

merely remarking, that in the former city he saw. “one of the whom I had met before, came up, and offering me a segar, and leaning against one of the lofty columns of the temple, opened upon the young gentlemen, with light sticks in their hands, gathering

amiable customs of our own city in full force here, namely, that of me with his plans of city improvements,' with new streets, and projected railroads, and the rise of lots. At first I almost thought around the door of the fashionable church, to stare at the ladies as it personal, and that he was making a fling at me in allusion to one they came out." He was "pleased to find such a mark of civilisaof the greatest hobbies of my native city : but I soon found that he tion in a land of barbarians.” was as deeply bitten as if he had been in Chicago or Dunkirk; and All unsentimental as Mr. Stephens professes himself to be, his the way in which he talked of moneyed facilities, the wants of the

sense of the classical was dreadfully outraged by the mode of his community, and a great French bank then contemplated at the Piræus, would have been no discredit to one of my friends at home.

conveyance from Smyrna to Constantinople: he actually “sneaked” The removal of the court has created a new era in Athens : but

on board--the steam-boat! Nay, more, he tells us that the dein my mind it is deeply to be regretted that it has been snatched struction of the janissaries was owing, not to the Sultan, but to from the ruin to which it was tending. Even 1, deeply imbued Steam Navigation. “Do not laugh,” says he, “but listen." with the utilitarian spirit of my country, and myself a quondam And so he tells us all about the prodigious changes which steam speculator in up-torn lots,' would fain save Athens from the l and European fashions are effecting on the character of the Turks.

6

But the steam-boat is going by" at the rate of eight or ten miles ar prepared for a trial of his patience. “At Constantinople I had hour, over a piece of the most classic ground consecrated in history, heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment of lazaretto submythology, or poetry, and in less time than the swift-footed jects, and the rough barbarous manners of the Russians to traAchilles could have travelled it.” But as he passes the plain of vellers ; and we had a foretaste of the light in which we were to Troy he gets wild :-“Hold !” he cries, “stop the engine! If be regarded, in the conduct of the health officer who came there be a piece of ground on earth in which the historical, and the alongside. He offered to take charge of any letters for the town, poetical, and the fabulous, are so beautifully blended that we would purify them that night, and deliver them in the morning ; and, not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now.” according to his directions, we laid them down on the deck, where But still the steam-boat goes on, running up that narrow arm of he took them up with a pair of long iron tongs, and putting them the sea which separates Europe and Asia ; and after being dazzled, into an iron box, shut it up, and rode off.” as all travellers are dazzled, by the splendid aspect of Constanti. On landing, “the first operation was to examine our passports, nople from the water, he lands in a city in which there is to be take down our names, and make a memorandum of the purposes seen "a lazy, lounging, and filthy population ; beggars basking in for which we severally entered the dominions of the emperor and the sun, and dogs licking their sores ; streets never cleaned but by autocrat of all the Russias. We were all called up, one after the the winds and rains; immense burying-grounds all over the city; other, captain, cook, and cabin-boy, cabin and deck passengers ; graves gaping ready to throw out their half-buried dead, the whole and never, perhaps, did steam-boat put forth a more motley asapproaching to one vast charnel-house ;—these dispel all illusions semblage than we presented. We were Jews, Turks, and Christand remove all doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves if it be ians; Russians, Poles, and Germans; English, French, and Italians; possible that in such a place health can ever dwell. We wonder Austrians, Greeks, and Illyrians; Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgathat it should ever, for the briefest moment, be free from that rians, and Sclavonians; Armenians, Georgians, and Africans; and dreadful scourge which comes with every summer's sun, and strews one American. I had before remarked their happy facility in acits streets with dead.” Nevertheless he adds, “ There is a good quiring languages ; and I saw a striking instance in the officer who chance for an enterprising Connecticut man to set up a hotel in conducted the examination, and who addressed every man in his Constantinople."

own language, with as much facility as though it had been his Having seen everything worth seeing in Constantinople, visited native tongue." the Mosque of St. Sophia, rode on the waters of the Golden Horn, The disagreeable ordeal of the quarantine was made as endurand visited the slave market, where his attendant strongly urged able as possible, by the civility of the functionaries. The lazaretto him to buy a Circassian beauty exposed for sale (the slave trade " is situated on high ground, within an enclosure of some fifteen had a stronghold in men's selfish interests and passions), he thought or twenty acres, overlooking the Black Sea, laid out in lawn and of going to Egypt; but the plague was raging too violently there. gravel-walks, and ornamented with rows of acacia-trees. Front. A Russian steamer was advertised for Odessa ; so he went on ing the sea was a long range of buildings, divided into separate board. It was a clumsy thing: "The tub of a steam-boat dashed apartments, each with a little court-yard in front, containing two up the Bosphorus at the rate of three miles an hour; while the or three acacias. The director, a fine, military-looking man, with classic waters, indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, blus- a decoration on his lapel, met us, on horseback, within the entering monster upon their surface, seemed to laugh at her unwieldy closure ; and with great suavity of manner said, " that he could and ineffectual efforts. Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, not bid us welcome to a prison, but that we should have the prilined on the European side almost with one continued range of vilege of walking at will over the grounds, and visiting each other, houses, exhibiting in every beautiful nook a palace of the Sultan, subject only to the attendance of a guardiano ; and that all that and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces of the foreign ambas- could contribute to our comfort should be done for us." sadors; passed the Giant's Mountain, and in about an hour before When he was once let loose upon Odessa, he got into very good dark were entering a new sea, the dark and stormy Euxine." company, and was very hospitably treated. He met with one

But to Mr. Stephens the Black Sea did not turn out the “dark remarkable character, -General Sontag, a native of Philadelphia, and stormy Euxine.” “History and poetry,” he says, “have in- who had served as sailing-master in the American navy, had vested this sea with extraordinary and ideal terrors ; but my expe- entered the Russian service, and was at this time inspector of the rience, both of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, was unfortunate port of Odessa, —a post which placed him next in rank to the for realising historical and poetical accounts. I have known the governor of the Crimea, Count Woronzo, one of the richest seigbeautiful Mediterranean a sea of storm and sunshine, in which the neurs in Russia. General Sontag's heart still warmed to his native storm greatly predominated. I found the stormy Euxine calm as land. Mr. Stephens spent a day with him at his country place, an untroubled lake ; in fact,” he adds, with American sauciness some distance from Odessa ; the general showed the traveller his (for Lakes Superior, Huron, and Ontario, make them despise our library which he called " America," fitted up with American driblets of waters), “ the Black Sea is in reality nothing more than books, such as those of Cooper, Irving, &c.; and his daughter a lake, not so large as many of our own.” Not meeting with a played on the piano, “ Hail, Columbia," and " Yankee Doodle." 'storm on the Black Sea, he tries to pick a quarrel with the memory " The day,” says Mr. Stephens, wore away too soon." of Fulton. “We boast of thee," he thus apostrophises the departed Odessa, which is situated in a small bay between the mouths of man—“ I have myself been proud of thee as an American ; but as the Dnieper and the Dniester, is quite a recent city, consisting, I sat at evening on the stern of the steamer, and listened to the only forty years ago, of a few fishermen s huts, on the shores of the clatter of the engine, and watched the sparks rushing out of the Black Sea. It now abounds with merchants' hotels, has an operahigh pipes, and remembered that this was on the dark and inhos- house, and “beauty and fashion” parade its “ boulevards,” laid pitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had begun after mine had out “ by the precipitous shore of the sea." ended! I trust I did his memory no wrong; but if I had borne A journey of nearly two thousand miles now lay before Mr. him malice, I could not have wished him worse than to have all his Stephens. He was about to start from Odessa to Moscow and dreams of the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own'engines." St. Petersburgh, from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the

Having crossed the western extremity of the Black Sea, from Baltic, moving from south to north, through the heart of the RusConstantinople on its southern, to Odessa on its northern shores, sian empire ; “ through a country more than half barbarous, and he found himself stopped on his entrance into the Russian empire, entirely destitute of all accommodation for travellers." He and a by the plague of quarantine-the fear of one plague producing companion bought a carriage, and hired a swaggering Frenchman another. Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour of as a servant and guide, who, as it afterwards turned out, scarcely Odessa ; "the yellow indicating those undergoing purification, knew as much Russian as to order changes of horse and money, and the red the fatal presence of the plague.” Mr. Stephens was provision and bed. The setting out was inauspicious. Mr.

66

Stephens and his companion, an Englishman, had a quarrel if he could get two, he was determined to try the experiment. The upon a point unnecessary here to mention," which went so high, travellers sold their carriage, and got rid of Henri. Their stay in that Mr. Stephens offered to break up the arrangement between Chioff was rendered pleasant by meeting with a Russian officer, them; which the other not unreasonably refused to do, seeing the who spoke good English, and was well acquainted with American travellers had conjointly bought a carriage, hired a servant, and literature. With him they visited the catacombs of the Petcherhad got their passports made out together. “But,” says Mr. skoi monastery, which contains the unburied bodies of the Russian Stephens, “men cannot be driving their elbows into each other's saints. “And year after year, thousands and tens of thousands ribs, comparing money accounts, and consulting upon the hundred come from the wilds of Siberia, and the confines of Tarlary, to little things that present themselves on such a journey, without kneel at their feet and pray.” On their way to Moscow, the tragetting upon, at least, sociable terms; and before night the veller passed great numbers of pilgrims, upwards of fifty thousand first day the feelings of my companion and myself had undergone having that year visited the catacombs, coming from every part of a decided change."

the immense empire of Russia. "I have seen,” says Mr. SteAway they went, over the vast southern plain of Russia : but phens, “the gathering of pilgrims at Jerusalem, and the whole Monsieur Henri, who had been hired by the day, was in no hurry body moving together, from the gates of the city, to bathe in the to get over the ground. They suspected him to be encouraging Jordan; and I have seen the great caravan of forty thousand true the post-masters not to be very prompt in furnishing horses. believers, tracking their desolate way through the deserts of AraThe post-masters are mostly all Jews; and though there is a bia to the tomb of the Prophet at Mecca : but I remember, as if certain posting charge fixed by law, travellers, unarmed with offi- they were before me now, the groups of Russian pilgrims strewed cial terrors, or long-sounding titles, are apt to be considered as along the road, and sleeping under the pale moonlight, the bare mere common rascals, and treated as if they were spunges. On earth their bed, the heavens their only covering." the evening of the first day, the travellers arrived at the little town

They started from Chioff in the diligence, happy in the thought of Vosnezeuski, a Cossack town on the river Bog. They wanted to of being delivered from the annoyances of post-masters.

" With go on, but could not get horses, unless at an enhanced rate; alter- great pomp and circumstance, we drove through the principal cation ensued, but the post-master laughed at threats ; to punish streets, to advise the Knickerbockers of Chioff, of the actual deparHenri for his supposed connivance, he was ordered to the box of ture of the long-talked-of diligence ; the conducteur sounding his the carriage, to spend the night, and the travellers resolved to

trumpet, and the people stopping in the streets, and running to sleep inside : "but, to tell the truth, we felt rather cheap as we the doors, to see the extraordinary spectacle." woke during the night, and thought of the Jew sleeping away in

They were seven days on their way from Chioff to Moscow, the utter contempt of us, and our only satisfaction was in hearing an

diligence everywhere creating a “sensation,” but picking up no occasional groan from Henri.” The impudent Jew, in the morning, passengers ; though one “spirited individual” said, that if it asked a few roubles as a douceur. Good English would have been would wait three days, he would go on with it! We must skip, thrown away upon him, so Mr. Stephens resented it by drawing up

at present, over our traveller's adventures in Moscow, Petersthe window of the carriage, and scowling at him through the glass. burgh, and Warsaw, as we shall have occasion to return to this

They now crossed the great southern steppes of Russia, passing quarter of the world. The present “ Incidents of Travel” close droves of cattle, and trains of waggons, fifty or sixty together, with a visit to the salt-mines of Wielitska, about twelve miles transporting merchandise toward Moscow, or grain toward the from Cracow. The next set of " Incidents" were, as we have Black Sea. They met no travellers, except a seigneur, who, with already stated, published previous to the preceding, though folhis family, was returning from Moscow to his estate in the country lowing them in point of time. In December, 1835 (he does not His equipage consisted of four carriages, with six or eight horses give the particular date), “ after a passage of five days from Malta, to each; the baggage containing beds, and cooking utensils-an

I was perched up in the rigging of an English schooner, glass in equipment in caravan style, somewhat the same as for a journey in hand, and earnestly looking for the land of Egypt. The captain the desert, the traveller carrying with him provision and every had never been there before, but we had been running several thing necessary for his comfort, as not expecting to procure any hours along the low coast of Barbary, and the chart and compass thing on the road, nor to sleep under a roof during the whole told us we could not be far from the fallen city of Alexander. journey. He stops when he pleases, and his servants prepare his Night came on, however, without our seeing it. The ancient meals, sometimes in the open air, but generally at the post-house. Pharos, the lantern of Ptolemy, the eighth wonder of the world, "We had,” says Mr. Stephens, “constant difficulties with Henri

no longer throws its light far over the bosom of the sea to guide the and the post-masters; but, except when detained an hour or two

weary mariner. Morning came, and we found ourselves directly by these petty tyrants, we rolled on all night, and in the morning opposite the city, the shipping in the outward harbour, and the again woke upon the same boundless plain.”

fleet of the Pacha riding at anchor under the walls of the Seraglio, On the fourth day after leaving Odessa, the travellers entered carrying me back in imagination to the days of the Macedonian Chioff, (Kiev,) the ancient capital of Russia. It is on the banks of conqueror, of Cleopatra, and the Ptolemies." the Dnieper, and stands at a great height on the crest of an amphi

“ The present city of Alexandria, even after the dreadful ravages theatre of hills, which rise abruptly in the middle of an immense made by the plague last year, is still supposed to contain more than plain. " For many centuries it has been regarded as the Jerusalem 50,000 inhabitants, and is decidedly growing. It stands outside of the north, the sacred and holy city of the Russians; and long the Delta in the Libyan Desert, and, as Volney remarks, . It is before reaching it, its numerous convents and churches, crowning only by the canal which conducts the waters of the Nile into the the summit, and hanging on the sides of the hill, with their quad- reservoirs in the time of inundation, that Alexandria can be con

sidered as connected with Egypt.' Founded by the great Alexander, rupled domes, and spires, and chains, and crosses, gilded with

to secure his conquests in the East, being the only safe harbour ducat gold, and glittering in the sun, gave the whole city the along the coast of Syria or Africa, and possessing peculiar comappearance of golden splendour. The churches and monasteries

mercial advantages, it soon grew into a giant city : fifteen miles have one large dome in the centre, with a spire, surmounted by a in circumference, containing a population of 300,000 citizens, and cross, and several smaller domes around it, also with spires and as many slaves; one magnificent street, 2000 feet broad, ran the crosses, connected by pendent chains, and gilded so purely that whole length of the city, from the Gate of the Sea to the Canopie

Gate, commanding a view, at each end, of the shipping, either in they never tarnish."

the Mediterranean or in the Mareotic Lake, and another of equal At Chioff (properly Kiev) they heard of a diligence for Moscow, length intersected it at right angles; a spacious circus without the and went to the office of the proprietor about it. He said that Canopie Gate, for chariot-races, and on the east a splendid gymnathe attempt to run a diligence was discouraging ; that e.e had ad- sium, more than six hundred feet in length, with theatres, baths, vertised two weeks, and had not booked a single passenger ; but and all that could make it a desirable residence for a luxurious

a

** One

people. When it fell into the hands of the Saracens, according to experiment of the dromedary, made an attempt to hire a boat, the report of the Saracen general to the Calif Omar, it was impos- with a view of proceeding down the Red Sea to Tor, supposed to sible to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauties;' and it is be the Elino, or place of palm-trees, mentioned in the Exodus of said to have contained four thousand palaces, four thousand the Israelites, and only two days' journey from Mount Sinai. The baths, four hundred theatres or public edifices, twelve thousand shops, and forty thousand tributary Jews.' From that time, like boats, however, were all taken by pilgrims, and none could be pro. everything else which falls in the hands of the Mussulman, it has cured, at least for so long a voyage. He accordingly sent off his been going to ruin, and the discovery of the passage to India by camels round the head of the gulf, and crossing himself by water, the Cape of Good Hope gave the death-blow to its commercial met them on the Petrean side of the sea. Resuming his journey greatness. At present it stands a phenomenon in the history of a to the southward, he passed safely through a barren and mounTurkish dominion. It appears once more to be raising its head tainous region, bare of verdure, and destitute of water, in about from the dust. It remains to be seen whether this rise is the legitimate and permanent effect of a wise and politic government,

seven days, to Mount Sinai. From thence he went to Akaba, combined with natural advantages, or whether the Pacha is not where he met the Sheik, as by agreement. A horse of the best forcing it to an unnatural elevation, at the expense, if not upon breed of Arabia was provided, and, although suffering from ill the ruins, of the rest of Egypt. It is almost presumptuous, on the health, he proceeded manfully through the desert to Petra and threshold of my entrance into Egypt, to speculate upon the future Mount Hor. The difficulties of the route proved to be chiefly condition of this interesting country; but it is clear that the Pacha those arising from the rapacity of his friend, the Sheik of Akaba, is determined to build up the city of Alexandria if he can : his fleet who threw a thousand impediments in his way with the purpose is here, his army, his arsenal, and his forts are here; and he has forced and centred here a commerce that was before divided of magnifying the importance of the service rendered, and obtainbetween several places. Rosetta has lost more than two-thirds of ing, in consequence, the larger allowance of bucksheesh. its population. Damietta has become a mere nothing, and even “ One," says Mr. Stephens, “ might expect to find these Cairo the Grand has become tributary to what is called the regene. children of nature, the Arabs, free from the reproach of civilised rated city."

life the love of gold. But, fellow-citizens and fellow-worshippers From Alexandria he went to Cairo, where he had the usual of Mammon! hold up your heads, the reproach must not be contraveller's interview with Mohammed Ali, the Pacha of Egypt. He tined to you. I never saw anything like the expression of face then sailed up the Nile, as far as the Lower Cataracts. This has with which a Bedouin looks upon silver and gold. When he asks become so common a route, that Mr. Stephens considers the for bucksheesh, and receives the glittering metal, his eyes sparkle excursion to be a ridiculously cheap one, an amusement attended with wild delight, his fingers clutch it with eager rapacity, and he with no degree of danger. A boat manned with ten men may be skulks away like the miser to count it over alone, and hide it from procured for thirty or forty dollars a-month, provisions are cheap, all other eyes.” Speaking of the Arabs generally, he says, and, says our traveller, addressing his countrymen, “ You sail by one I had seen the many illusions of my waking dreams fade under your own country's banner; and when you walk along the away, the gorgeous pictures of oriental scenes melt into nothing: river, if the Arabs look particularly black and scowling, you proudly but I had still clung to the primitive simplicity and purity of the feel that there is safety in its folds." On his return to Cairo, he children of the desert, their temperance and abstinence, their conplanned a more daring “excursion." He wished to visit Mount tented poverty and contempt for luxuries, as approaching the true Sinai, and then to proceed to Palestine, but, by taking the usual nobility of man's nature, and sustaining the poetry of the land route, he would have been subjected to a quarantine of fourteen of the East.' But my last dream was broken; and I never saw days on account of the plague in Egypt. He therefore resolved

among the wanderers of the desert any traits of character, or any to strike through the heart of the Desert, lying between Mount habits of life, which did not make me prize and value more the Sinai and the frontier Palestine; in fact, to attempt a feat which privileges of civilisation. I had been more than a month alone had not been accomplished by any European traveller, to cross or with the Bedouins, and to say nothing of their manners-excluding pass through the land of Idumea, the Edom of the Scriptures, women from all companionship, dipping their fingers up to the and the subject of remarkable prophecies. He was strongly knuckles in the same dish, eating sheep's insides, and sleeping advised not to attempt it, on account of the danger ; the only under tents crawling with vermin engendered by their filthy person who encouraged him was the American consul, and but for habits—their temperance and frugality are from necessity not from him the idea would have been abandoned.

choice; for in their nature they are gluttonous, and will eat at any It happened that the Sheik of Akaba, the chief of a bold and time till they are gorged of whatever they can get, and then lie powerful tribe of Bedouins, was then at Cairo, for the purpose of down and sleep like brutes." escorting and protecting the annual caravan of pilgrims from that

The account given by Mr. Stephens of the excavated city of city to Mecca. An arrangement was made with the Sheik, by Petra is similar to the descriptions given by Laborde, and the few which he promised to conduct Mr. Stephens from Akaba to Hebron, other travellers who have visited it. The reader is, doubtless, fami. through the land of Edom, diverging to visit the celebrated city liar with the general appearance and character of this far-famed city. of Petra. It was settled, that after Mr. Stephens had visited Leaving Petra he started for Hebron, from whence he took the Mount Sinai he should go to Akaba, where the escort of the Arab ordinary route of travellers in the Holy Land; went to Bethlehem chief would meet and conduct him; and the latter gave the travel and Jerusalem, visiting the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and proler his signet, which he told him would be respected by all Arabs ceeding by Capernaum and Nazareth to Mount Carmel, from thence on the route from Cairo to Mount Sinai.

to Tyre and Sidon, from whence he sailed for Alexandria. The arrangements for the journey as far as Mount Sinai had been made for Mr. Stephens by the American consul. A Bedouin was procured as guide who had been with M. Laborde to Petra,

CHANGE SHOULD BREED CHANGE. and whose faith, as well as capacity, could be depended upon. New doth the sun appear, The caravan consisted of eight camels and dromedaries, with three The mountain snows decay ; young Arabs as drivers. The tent was the common tent of the Crown'd with frail flowers forth comes the infant year : Egyptian soldiers, bought at the government factory, being very

My soul, time posts away,

And thou yet in that frost, light, easily carried and pitched. The bedding was a mattress and

Which flower and fruit hath lost, coverlet : provision, bread, biscuit, rice, macaroni, tea, coffee,

As if all here immortal were, dost stay; dried apricots, oranges, a roasted leg of mutton, and two large

For shame! thy powers awake, skins containing the filtered water of the Nile. Thus equipped, Look to that heaven which never night makes black, the party struck immediately into the desert lying between Cairo And there, at that immortal sun's bright rays, and Suez, reaching the latter place, with but little incident, after Deck thee with flowers, which fear not rage of days. a journey of four days. At Suez our traveller, wearied with his

Drummond of Hawthornden.