“A Funeral Excursion Without a Corpse” | The Notebooks of Mark Twain

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IX “A Funeral Excursion Without a Corpse”
(11 August–11 October 1867)

The last dated entry in Notebook 8 (2 July 1867) left Clemens at sea, bound for Marseilles, while the entry bearing the earliest date in Notebook 9 (11 August 1867) marks his departure from the harbor of Naples. A notebook was certainly kept for the intervening period, but no evidence refutes Paine’s surmise that the “notes of this period are lost. We shall never know just what memoranda he made on the spot of the doings” of his companions as they traveled to Paris, Genoa, “then by rail through Italy to Milan, Venice, Florence and the rest, joining the ship again at Naples” ( MTN , p. 69). However, Mark Twain did include two references to this missing notebook in The Innocents Abroad. An engraving in chapter 19 ostensibly reproduces two pages from the notebook, even though the reproduction is obviously not a facsimile. On the right-hand page of an open notebook appears:

Picture by Titian in the Cathedral—

subject forgotten

size of a slate—

Priest said History of it was very curious

It was painted in the dark—

Train leaves at 10 AM—

October one unrecoverable word

On the left-hand page are the pencil dots recording the “astonishing clatter of reverberations” of “the most remarkable echo in the world” that Mark Twain witnessed just outside Milan. When Clemens saw specimen illustrations for Innocents in April 1869, he wrote Elisha Bliss: “Your idea about the ‘Echo’ diagram is correct—glad it is to be engraved” ( MTLP , p. 19). It is conceivable that Clemens sent his original notebook to the engraver, who failed to return it. A passage in chapter 24 of Innocents indicates that the notebook was lost subsequent to the writing of the book: the travelers “were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is so justly celebrated.”

Notebook 9 takes Clemens through the remainder of the itinerary for the excursion, concluding with his departure from Alexandria and the voyage back through the Mediterranean, but omits all details of his brief trip through Spain, the Atlantic crossing, the stopover in Bermuda, and the arrival in New York on 19 November 1867. “We were all lazy and satisfied, now,” Clemens wrote in chapter 59 of Innocents, “as the meager entries in my note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition,) prove. What a stupid thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any way.” Then, to make up for the absence of notebook entries or Alta letters covering the final stages of the journey, Mark Twain created a passage that he represented as a transcription from his notebook:

Sunday—Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night, also. No cards.

Monday—Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is well they are not cows—it would soak in and ruin the milk. The poor devil eagle from Syria looks miserable and droopy in the rain, perched on the forward capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if it were put into language and the language solidified, it would probably essentially dam the widest river in the world.

Tuesday—Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers seasick and invisible.

Wednesday—Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He circled round and round the ship, wanting to light, but afraid of the people. He was so tired, though, that he had to light, at last, or perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was as often blown away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea full of flying-fish. They rise in flocks of three hundred and flash along above the tops of the waves a distance of two or three hundred feet, then fall and disappear.

Thursday—Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city, beautiful green hilly landscape behind it. Staid half a day and left. Not permitted to land, though we showed a clean bill of health. They were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera.

Friday—Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the deck. Afterwards, charades.

Saturday—Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.

Sunday—Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight bells. Monotony till midnight.—Whereupon, dominoes.

Monday—Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the decks. Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr. C. Dominoes.

No date—Anchored off the picturesque city of Cagliari, Sardinia. Staid till midnight, but not permitted to land by these infamous foreigners. They smell inodorously—they do not wash—they dare not risk cholera.

Thursday—Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga, Spain.—Went ashore in the captain’s boat—not ashore, either, for they would not let us land. Quarantine. Shipped my newspaper correspondence, which they took with tongs, dipped it in sea water, clipped it full of holes, and then fumigated it with villainous vapors till it smelt like a Spaniard. Inquired about chances to run the blockade and visit the Alhambra at Granada. Too risky—they might hang a body. Set sail—middle of afternoon.

And so on, and so on, and so forth, for several days. Finally, anchored off Gibraltar, which looks familiar and home-like.

Although the passage is arbitrarily dated, and although Clemens inadvertently placed Algiers ahead of Cagliari on the itinerary, the facts are essentially as he presents them. Mark Twain borrowed several details—the storm, the land birds blown to sea, and the flying fish—from Notebook 9. Although not a genuine notebook entry, the passage approximates what Clemens would have written if he had kept a record of the trip through the Mediterranean.

It had been an exhausting two months since the group had left Italy in early August, proceeding south past Sicily through the western isles of Greece to arrive finally at Athens. Encountering a strict quarantine for cholera, the party sailed almost immediately for Constantinople, although not before Clemens and three comrades made a surreptitious midnight excursion to the Acropolis. After three days in Constantinople most of the passengers sailed through the Bosporus to the Black Sea, and then visited Sebastopol, Odessa, and finally Yalta, where they were received by Czar Alexander II. Returning to Constantinople, they encountered a five-day delay for coaling and so saw more of the city than they had planned. But by early September they were bound for Smyrna, took a side trip to the ruins of Ephesus in their first encounter with ancient, biblical ground. By September 10 they had arrived in Beirut and the Holy Land, the climax of their voyage to the East. Despite unforeseen complications about transportation and routes, they soon divided into several small parties with itineraries to suit their members’ varying tastes for roughing it. Clemens joined with Dr. Birch and William Denny (who had both gone along on the moonlight hike to the Acropolis), Dan Slote, Jack Van Nostrand, Julius Moulton, Joshua William Davis, and William F. Church in a three-week overland trip to Baalbek and Damascus, then down through the length of Palestine to Jerusalem, over to the Dead Sea, the Jordan, and Bethlehem, and then finally to Jaffa (Joppa), where they rejoined the ship. Leaving Palestine (which all the travelers found “lovely only in books”) early in October, they spent several days in Alexandria, which seemed pleasantly European and modern. They traveled by train to Cairo and the pyramids, finally turning homeward on October 7. The last dated entry in Notebook 9 is for October 11 and appears slightly rephrased in the bogus notebook passage of chapter 59 of The Innocents Abroad: “At sea, somewhere in the neighborhood of Malta. Very stormy.”

The notebook maintains the highly professional, detailed, and detached style that prevailed in the latter part of Notebook 8. Most entries were designed as brief memoranda of sights and incidents from which Clemens could construct his letters to the Alta. Since he tended to write those letters soon after the experience, it is only occasionally that we find extended, circumstantial accounts in the notebook. Leisure on shipboard encouraged greater expansion—both the trip to the Acropolis and the visit with the czar are given in some detail—but Notebook 9 was less a journal than a memorandum book, from which Clemens wrote his Alta letters and eventually The Innocents Abroad.

The factual, mnemonic form of the notebook demonstrates how Clemens’ “reportorial instinct” worked. In a letter of 1875 he would counsel Dan De Quille, who was planning to write The Big Bonanza, to “bring along lots of dry statistics—it’s the very best sauce a humorous book can have. Ingeniously used, they just make a reader smack his chops in gratitude” (William Wright Papers, The Bancroft Library). Clemens’ use of this method is documented by the kind of detail he preserved. There is a sense of almost indiscriminate note-taking. Clemens’ frequent, often phonetic, misspellings show that he recorded what he heard from guides and fellow travelers, as well as what he read in guidebooks. He traveled, as he would write in the preface to The Innocents Abroad, with the intention of eventually showing his reader “how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who travelled in those countries before him.” Penciled sketches, especially rough maps or panoramas, to jog his memory and keep the physical reality clearly before him, appear frequently and are sometimes labeled “(Not copied)” or “(This drawing is not copied).” He kept a scrupulous chronology of arrivals, departures, and delays—often to the hour—not because these details would be used directly for letters, but in anticipation of the need to reconstruct actual events. Julia Newell wrote scornfully to the Janesville (Wis.) Gazette of 30 November 1867 that in Jerusalem she had witnessed guides leading “travelers with the inevitable note book, swallowing and recording it all, with the greatest apparent credulity.” Clemens’ note-taking, however, was that of an ambitious, professional reporter at work.

Despite Clemens’ remarkable stamina in traveling, sight-seeing, and not least of all in writing, the next two months were marked by fatigue and waning interest, especially in Turkey and Palestine. Only two events seemed to break the gathering pattern: Clemens’ hike to the Acropolis and the audience with Czar Alexander Nicholas. The first probably endorsed his image of himself as the wild westerner, willing to defy law and physical danger for the sake of adventure, while the second flattered the emerging image of the polite and articulate writer, the man who would naturally be called upon to write the group’s formal address to the czar.

The visit with Russian royalty was certainly one of the high points of the trip, both for Clemens and for his fellow travelers, but the origin of the visit is not entirely clear. Clemens says in his notebook that the original suggestion came from the friendly Russians at Sebastopol, and there seems no reason to doubt this private record. He also says there that for “certain reasons” they at first declined to seek an audience, “& everybody was sorry enough, very naturally.” In his Alta letter he explained that “our time is so short . . . and more especially our coal is so nearly out, that we judged it best to forego the rare pleasure of holding social intercourse with an Emperor” ( TIA , p. 134). But on 25 August in a letter home he indicated the fear of a rebuff: “we knew that a great English Excursion party, and also the Viceroy of Egypt, in his splendid yacht, had been refused an audience within the last fortnight, so we thought it not safe to try it” ( MTL , p. 132).

Although the passengers were initially unaware of it, one of the motives that had led the owners of the vessel to charter the Quaker City for this excursion was their hope of finding a purchaser for the ship. This somewhat cynical exploitation of the high-minded plans initiated by members of the congregation of the Plymouth Church is documented by Daniel D. Leary’s letter commenting on the decision to incorporate Yalta in the itinerary. Leary, who was a passenger, wrote to his brother on August 29 that he “was induced to go there in the hope that the steamer might tempt the Emperor to purchase. . . . I had telegraphed from Odessa at the suggestion of the Governor there to the Governor at Yalta, announcing my intention to visit the Emperor, so when we arrived an aide of the Governor came out to receive us, and invited me ashore to call on the Governor General, who said the Emperor would receive us the next day at the palace, which he did in a most cordial manner.” Although commerce brought him to Yalta, it was not his only satisfaction: “Of course I was king pin, and walked about on the most familiar footing with the Emperor and Empress.” And, he assured his brother, “they are splendid people and no mistake in going through the conservatories I had the Grand duchess Marie on my arm, what do you think of that?” (Lewis Leary, “More Letters from the Quaker City,” American Literature 42 May 1970: 201).

William E. James, for one, took a more sardonic view of Leary’s inept commercial efforts in a letter published by the Brooklyn Eagle on 20 September 1867. James wrote that after the consul had read the address the czar was

surrounded and buttonholed by Leary . . . urging him to come on board of the Quaker City; he stood there awhile, looking ill at ease and nervous, and finally turned to get to the rest of the party to speak to them, but was headed off by Leary, who would post himself directly in front of him, with his mouth wide open, showing his teeth, and putting his hand on his shoulder, urging him to come on board; three times was this repeated.

Even though Leary’s unsuccessful commercial ambition was known, his primary role in arranging for the reception itself was gratefully acknowledged by twenty-seven members of the Quaker City party. A petition addressed to him, thanking him for his “kindness in affording us an opportunity to visit the Emperor of Russia at Yalta” survives, and Clemens’ name is among those on the list.

Clemens’ enthusiasm in Notebook 8 for the foreignness of Tangier and his excitement about the illicit excursion to the Acropolis and the unexpected reception by the czar contrast with his relatively jaded reactions to Constantinople and Palestine. As Clemens traveled through Italy, the eagerness of the relatively green westerner gave way to the ennui of a homesick and occasionally chauvinistic traveler. “What,” he wrote the New York Tribune on August 31, “is a Turkish bath in Constantinople to a Russian one in New-York? What are the dancing dervishes to the negro minstrels?—and Heaven help us, what is Oriental splendor to the Black Crook? New-York has fifty wonders where Constantinople has one!” ( TIA , p. 132).

This disillusionment is consistently reflected in the reactions of Clemens, and of the other passengers, to the cities of the Near East, with their “picturesque” associations and reputations. Constantinople, seen “from a mile or so up the Bosphorus,” Clemens wrote the Alta, “is by far the handsomest city we have seen.” But “its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From the time you start ashore till you get back again, you damn it.” Likewise, “Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. . . . If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on Mahomet’s hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go inside the walls. . . . It is so crooked and cramped and dirty that one cannot realize that he is in the splendid city he saw from the hill top” ( TIA , pp. 112–113, 194–195). The notebook entry is laconic, but firm: “got enough of Damascus. Don’t want to see any more of it.”

Julia Newell wrote to the Janesville (Wis.) Gazette on 3 September 1867 (published 31 October 1867):

Out in the bay before the city which disputes with Naples the claim to the loveliest situation in the world, with the rays of the declining sun lighting up its innumerable gilded mosques and minarets, it seems in truth as fair a city as the sun ever shone upon—yes, as magnificent as the most vivid imagination could paint. But when we come to toil up the steep, rough, wretchedly-paved, filthy streets, picking our way through the miserable mangy curs asleep in the sun, and so thickly laid out as to hardly leave a path, we began to think that if distance ever did lend enchantment to the view, that statement is peculiarly true of Constantinople.

She found Jerusalem, “even without the aids of imagination and association, . . . imposing and beautiful, as from the distant hill tops it rises, gleaming against the sky. But when you are fairly within her walls, the spell is broken, and you find modern Jerusalem only another dirty Turkish town. . . . However prepared, I think that every one must feel a certain disappointment at the almost total obliteration of every trace of the Jerusalem of Holy Writ.” And Moses S. Beach in his eighteenth letter to the New York Sun, spoke for the entire company:

As a child, I supposed Constantinople to be a paradise on earth, and one of my greatest ambitions was to look upon its glistening domes and its forest of minarets while I listened to the oft-repeated calls of the faithful to prayer. That I have unravelled the enchantment and found in it but the effect of distance is not surprising; yet must I confess myself wholly unprepared for the utter disappointment experienced in common with nearly every one of my fellow passengers. . . . Except in size and in an unequalled beauty of position, Constantinople ranks among the least and last of the European cities.

Clemens found the East discomforting, even threatening, for other reasons. Remarking on the Moslem disdain for Christians he fumed: “I never hated a Chinaman as I hate these degraded Turks and Arabs” ( TIA , p. 203). His irascibility extended to the people who surrounded and watched the sleeping travelers in Cesarea Phillippi:

They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched over our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous, and uncomfortable and savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe. ( TIA , p. 211)

The role of the western maverick, slyly puncturing the grandeur of European culture, as well as the smug pretentiousness of the eastern pilgrims, had been one of the chief pleasures of the early part of the voyage. But, confronted with cultures that had no pretense and that uncomfortably reminded him of his own western background, Clemens expressed a hostility that was often masked by genteel humor. Watching the women of Palestine gather camel dung for fuel, he remarked:

I am susceptible, but even up to this very moment I have never taken what you might seriously regard as a shine to one of these young women. They are not fastidious enough for me. I may be too particular, but such is my bias, anyway. ( TIA , p. 246)

The poverty of the landscape had become as offensive as the residents. At Capernaum he was reminded of the desolate parts of Nevada:

This country reminds me of Washoe all the time. Take Washoe Valley, and you have this Valley of the Sources of the Jordan; take Washoe Lake and you have the Waters of Merom exactly; take the swamps that border it and you have the dwelling-place of the Bedouin goat herdsmen; take the forbidding mountains that surround the picture, and strip them of every tree, every shrub, and batter from their outlines every semblance of grace and beauty, and you have the mountains that border Merom. . . . They say it is a most favorable specimen of Palestine. If it is a favorable specimen of Palestine, surely Palestine is Washoe’s born mate. ( TIA , p. 227)

Yet, despite this dissatisfaction, Clemens continued to approach every jaunt and journey with energy and enthusiasm. Four days before beginning this notebook he wrote to Frank Fuller that he had “had a good deal of fun on this trip, but it is costing like Sin. I will be a busted community some time before I see America again. The worst of it is, that a ship is a bad writing desk and I can’t write on shore because I have too much to see there. So I neglect my correspondence half the time and botch it the balance” (TS in MTP). Although he actually maintained a very regular correspondence, it seems clear that he was rarely tempted to stay on board to write or rest. While the ship was delayed at Constantinople, he walked throughout the town before leaving for nearby Scutari. Although disillusioned by Jerusalem, he set off on a three-day trip to the Dead Sea and Bethlehem. After three weeks of riding through Palestine, he sailed with relief for Egypt, where he and Jack Van Nostrand, unlike the rest of the travelers, immediately disembarked at Alexandria instead of waiting until morning. Toward the end of the voyage, when others hesitated and delayed, Clemens impetuously set out with three others for a grueling overland trip through Spain.

Clemens’ disillusionment with Palestine did not diminish. When he reported the dream of a revised excursion in his Alta letter of November 20, he indicated his opinion of this portion of the trip. While a projected, idealized voyage with Ned Wakeman allowed forty days in London, forty in Vienna, forty in Rome, and so on, it allotted only a total of six days for Egypt, two days for Constantinople, and “two hours and a half in the Holy Land.”

Notebook 9 now contains 184 pages, 21 of them blank. The pages measure 6½ by 3 15/16 inches (16.4 by 10 centimeters), and their edges are marbled in red, black, and gold. They are ruled with twenty-four blue horizontal lines. The endpapers and remaining flyleaf are white; the front flyleaf and at least the first ruled leaf have been torn out and are missing. The notebook is bound in a stiff cover of tan calf. The front cover and the first gathering are only loosely attached to the binding; portions of some gatherings have come loose altogether. Someone, probably Paine, has written “1867” in ink on the front cover. All entries are in pencil, with occasional blue or black pencil use marks made by Paine.

The great bulk of the notebook comprises a continuous journal, beginning in Naples and ending near Malta. But Clemens inverted the notebook to isolate at the back such entries as the petition to Captain Duncan, a sketch of Athens, a list of passengers, cryptic notes on Egypt, and the nubs of several jokes used in The Innocents Abroad.

On many notebook pages Clemens entered headings, some apparently written at the time of the initial inscription, some added later. These are usually simply such things as “Constantinople” or “Syria,” but they occasionally include dates mentioned elsewhere on the page or on a preceding page. Since these headings, which serve to index the contents of the manuscript page, would interrupt the continuity of the printed page, they have been omitted here except at their first occurrence. Omitted headings are recorded as emendations. On the back cover Clemens wrote, in ink, a brief summary of his itinerary; this appears in the present text where the notebook is inverted (p. 447.4–6). A small piece of paper, with three entries on it, is pasted on the back cover, and these appear at page 447.7–9.

sequence 1

[MS: N9_outside front cover]
[MS: N9_front endpaper]
[MTP: N&J1_380]

Sam L. Clemens—1867—Sept.

[MS: N9_leaf_001r]

Burial of Moses

By Nebo’s lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan’s wave,

In a vale in the land of Moab,

There lies a lonely grave;

And no man dug that sepulchre,

And no man saw it e’er,

For the “Sons of God” upturned the sod,

And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral,

That ever passed on earth;

But no man heard the trampling,

Or saw the train go forth.

Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean’s cheek

Grows into the great sun—

Noiselessly as the spring-time

Her crown of verdure weaves,

And all the trees on all the hills

Open their thousand leaves;

So without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,

[MS: N9_leaf_001v] Silently down, from the mountan’s crown

The great vast grand procession swept.

[MTP: N&J1_381] Perchance the bald old eagle,

On gray Beth-peor’s hight,

Out of his rocky eyry

Looked on the wondrous sight;

Perchance the lion, stalking,

Still shuns that hallowed spot:

For beast & bird have seen & heard

That which man knoweth not.

But when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed, & muffled drum

Follow the funeral car;

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed

While peals the minute-gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honored place

With costly marble drest—

[MS: N9_leaf_002r] In the great minster transept,

Where lights like glories fall,

And the sweet choir sings & the organ rings

Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the bravest warrior

That ever buckled sword;

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word;

And never earth’s philosopher

Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page truths half so sage

S As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honor?

The hill-side for his pall,

[MTP: N&J1_382] To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave,

And God’s own hand in that lonely land,

To lay him in the grave!

[MS: N9_leaf_002v] In that deep grave without a name,

Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again—most wondrous thought!—

Before the judgment day,!

And stand, with glory wrapped around,

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life

With the Incarnate Son of God.

O lonely tomb in Moab’s land!

O dark Beth-peor’s hill!

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,

And teach them to be still.

God hath His mysteries of grace,

Ways that we cannot tell;

And hides them deep like the secret sleep

Of him he loved so well.

[MS: N9_leaf_003r]

Italy.

From Naples.

Sailed from Naples
Aug 11 at 6 AM.

[MTP: N&J1_383]

7 PM, with the western
horizon all golden from
the sunken sun, & specked
with distant ships, the
bright full moon shi-
ning shining like a silver
shield high over head,
th & the deep dark blue of
the Mediterranean
under foot & a strange
stort of twilight affected
by all these different
lights & colors, all
around us & about
us, we sighted old
Stromboli.

How grand it looms
up out of the lonely
[MS: N9_leaf_003v] sea & how symmetri-
cal symmetrical . It is beautiful,
now, with its dark blue
just veiled under a pearly
mist that half con-
ceals conceals & half discloses

drawing, labeled:
Stromboli
(This drawing is not copied.)

three entries inserted to the left of the drawing:

Two jets—tall.

steam, or
smoke.

white

8—The 2 jets of
smoke have turned
into one, a hundred
feet broad—can’t
see how high—can’t
see it after it gets
above the black
background of the
[MS: N9_leaf_004r] further rim of the
crater.

⟦In Rome.

Peter’s footprints.

Peter’s prison (Mamertine)
—print of face—miraculous
spring he made to baptise the
soldiers—hole where he broke
through.

[MTP: N&J1_384]

Chateau Margaux Bath.

New St Bronze Statue of
Jupiter—$350,000—gave $36,000
for the land.

Fellow in outskirts who
sells urns of dead ashes
2,000 fr.

St Peter’s chains

—wipe, kis
touch to
forehead &
necklace

— Napoleon & the Sultan

In bronze! Appian
Way!—Chris Colombo.

[MS: N9_leaf_004v]

Sicily—Straits Messina.

Hard a case as Paul
—got to knock him end-
ways endways with a streak of
lightning before he woul
he could get religion
through him.

Aug. 12.

Passed through Straits
of Messina, between
I Southern Italy &
Sicily—2 miles wide
in narrowest place.

Sylla on the one
hand & Charybdis on
the other.

One of Ulysses’
companion died at
Baia.

Passed close to
city of Messina—
mass of gas lights,
—

[MS: N9_leaf_005r]

Greece.

Mount Etna
not visible.

[MTP: N&J1_385]

Aug 13.

Been skirting along
the Isles of Greece all
day—western side
—very mountainous
—prevailing tints gray
& brown approaching
to red. Pretty little white
villages surrounded
by trees nessel nestle
in little depressions &
roost upon gentle
elevations on the lofty
table-lands with high
perpendicularsea-
walls. We see them
all as if laid down on
a map.

Splendid, rich car-
mine carmine sunset.—fine
[MS: N9_leaf_005v] sunsets are rare
in Italy, or at least
striking ones. They
are lovely, often,
but their loveliness
is soft & rich— ele-
gant elegant , refined—
never grand, splen-
did splendid , gorgeous, like
those in our cold
Northern States.

The damnable
public burial
ground at
Naple.

[MS: N9_leaf_006r]

The Piraeus.— 　　 Greece.

Aug. 14.

Entered the little nar-
row narrow canal (500 yds wide
& 2 miles long) & in be-
tween between two light on reefs
hardly wide enough
for the ship—came
in gallantly without
chart or pilot.

The town extends
most of the way around
a deep circular Inline graphic basin
& is the cleanest, neatest
2 & 3-story of square
cream-colored build-
ings buildings we have seen.

[MTP: N&J1_386]

drawing

Boats are not pretty, but
how they fly! & how ex-
[MS: N9_leaf_006v] quisitely skillful
these Greeks are in
handling them. I
would like to stay
with them a while.

drawing, labeled:
Athens 　 Mats. 　 Museum
The Piraeus
Native.
⟦Not copied.⟧

The sun is very
bright & the atmos-
phere atmosphere infinitely clearer
& purer than that
of Naples.

[MS: N9_leaf_007r]
[MTP: N&J1_387]

Athens. 　　 Greece

Thursday, Aug. 15,/57.

At We were put into
quarantine at once, yes-
terday yesterday , & rather than be
cooped up at anchor re-
mote remote from shore for
11 days, the Captain decided
to sail lie still 24 hours
& then sail direct for
Constantinople.

It was a remarked
by the commandant
of the port (the Pi-
raeus Piraeus ,) that guards
would be set & a
watch kept upon us,
& that any one found
breaking the quar-
antine quarantine by stealing
ashore would be se-
verely severely dealt with—
& quarantine laws in
[MS: N9_leaf_007v]

Themistocles’ Tomb.

these countries are
usually harsh & even
cruel unnecessarily
cruel sometimes.

[MTP: N&J1_388]

It was a bitter
disappointment to
the whole ship’s com-
pany company , to be so near
to famous Athens
& not be permitted
to visit it. We could
see the city vaguely
defined in the dis-
tant distant valley with the
glass, & with the with
the naked eye we
could see the grand
ruins upon
[MTP: N&J1_389] the
Acropolis, & with
the telescope could
count the columns
of the Parthenon.

[MS: N9_leaf_008r]

We imagined we
could trace out Mars
Hill (the Areopagus,)
where Paul preached,
the highest court was
held 3 days in the year,
& where Demosthenes
thundered his Phillip-
pics Phillippics into the ears of
the disheartened Athe-
nians Athenians ; we believed
we could see the Mu-
seum Museum Hill & the Pnyx.
We cared little for
Hymettus & Pentel-
icon Pentelicon .

At 11 o’clock at
night Dr Jackson, Col.
Denny, Dr. Birch &
I, left the ship & in a
boat & got set on shore
outside the quarantine
lines—then stranggled
over the hills, serenaded
[MS: N9_leaf_008v] by a hundred dogs,
skirted the town un-
der under a d clouded moon,
& in half an hour
were safe beyond any
chance of capture
& fairly away for
Athens. We could
not find a road that
seemed to lead in
the right direction,
& so, taking the tall
steep mountain to
the left of the Acrop-
olis Acropolis for a mark,
we steered at it for
two hours industri-
ously industriously over hills, throgh
[MS: N9_leaf_009r] valleys, stony desert
places, plowed fields
& vineyards, & walked
fast, too, for there
was little time to
spare if we would
get back to the ship
before the treacherous
day should dawn.

We made the
trip! (stopped occa-
sionally occasionally by savages
armed with guns, who
rose mysteriously up
out of shadows &
darkness & said
[MTP: N&J1_390] “Ho!”
when we happened cas-
ually casually to be stealing
grapes,) and stood
under the towering
[MS: N9_leaf_009v] massive walls of
the ancient citadel
of Athens—walls
that had loomed above
the heads of better
men than we, a thou-
sand thousand years before
the Son of God was
born in b Bethlehem!

At It was between
1 & 2 oclock—the place
was silent—the gates
were shut—the devil
to pay. Denny tried
to climb over a ru-
ined ruined wall—knocked
down a stone—
somebody shouted
from within, &
Denny dropped!

We soon roused
[MS: N9_leaf_010r] that fellow out—(the
guard)—& entered
the majestic ruin.

The Propileia, — the
gateway to the temples
of the Acropolis,
is of lovely well r fluted
columns, of white
marble

Parthenon—8 × 17
columns—inner row
same size columns
but smaller Num-
ber Number —250 ft long, 100 wide.

Marble arm-chairs,
bas-reliefs, entabla-
tures entablatures , sul statues &c

Grim marble faces
looking glancing up suddenly
[MS: N9_leaf_010v] at you out of the
grass at your feet,

Temple of Mi-
nerva Minerva —small.

Temple of Her-
cules Hercules (with the six
noble caryatides
supporting the por-
tico portico .

Huge reddish
marble tower of
rough, massive
masonry, like a
chaimney—don’t
know what it
was for.

Old ruined arches
in the valley below
our right.

[MS: N9_leaf_011r]

The narrow rocky
ridge & flight of
steps & square
rostrum on the
Aeropagus or Mars
Hill—sacred to
memories of St.
Paul & Demosthe-
nes Demosthenes , Aristides,
Themistocles &c.

But Athens by
moonlight, from
the bastions! The
King’s white palace
& shrubbery garden
flecked with mellow
gas-lights! The
[MTP: N&J1_391] sharp-
ly sharply defined windows, chim-
[MS: N9_leaf_011v] neys, shingles, al-
most almost , of every
single house in
Athens, in the lus
splendid lustre
that was pouring
out of the Heav-
ens Heavens , & even paling
the scattering gas-
lights! Athens
spread out right
underneath our
feet, 200 feet be-
low below us, & the grand
old white ruin of the
Parthenon towering
over our heads!
—such the Athens by moon-
[MS: N9_leaf_012r] light! When I for-
get forget it I shall be dead
—not before.

We made the trip
undisturbed save
by the armed grape-
guards & the seven-
teen seventeen million dogs
that followed us thro’
the Piraeus, & reached
the ship at 4.30 A.M.
this morning, just
as the day was
dawning. I sat
up an hour & saw
or two & saw a very
beautiful sunrise
—a rich s carmine flush
that suffused all the
[MS: N9_leaf_012v] Heavens behind
the Acropolis like
a blush!

At 6.30 after
I had gone to bed,
Mr. Griswold came
& got my Moorish
fez, & he & James
& Crocker went
ashore intending
to steal away to
Athens, but the
guards discov-
ered discovered them before
they went a thou-
sand thousand yards, & chased
them—they say it
was a close race,
but they won the
boat & escaped to
the ship.

[MS: N9_leaf_013r]

We sailed at noon.
Of course the passen-
gers passengers are very sorry
they could not go to
Athens & the Acrop-
olis Acropolis , but it could
not be helped—
if many had made
our trip w some
of us would surely
have got into trou-
ble trouble . It would not
have been possi-
ble possible to avoid arrest
if enough had
left the ship to at-
tract attract the attention
of the people.

Through a friend,
Bullard & Beach
fared uncommonly
well.

[MS: N9_leaf_013v]

Aug. 15.

Booming through
the Grecian Archi-
pelago Archipelago with a
splendid breeze.

Many passen-
gers passengers sea-sick.

[MTP: N&J1_392]

Bloody sunset.

Splendid full
moon—sea white
with foamy waves
& a hundred white-
winged ships.

Passed a ruined
temple— grace-
ful graceful , beautiful
fluted white columns,
standing lonely on a tall barren
promontory over-
looking overlooking the sea,
—Curious place
for it—the coun-
[MS: N9_leaf_014r] try utterly barren
& uninhabited
for miles in
every direction.

Aug 16. TROY.

We are now, (11
AM., right abreast
of ancient the Plains of Troy &
a little rock 200 yds
long with a light on
it & between it & the
shore (Asia Minor)
was the anchorage of
the Greek vessels.

The Plain of
Troy is wide, &
long & low—8 or
ten miles back is a
range of undulating
[MS: N9_leaf_014v] hills. Half the Plain
is covered with what
seems to be green
underbrush & the
other half is sand.

We are making
a straight break
for the Dardanells
& shall enter in
an hour or two.

drawing, labeled:
Imbros
C. Helles
Lemnos
Dardanelles
Tenedos I.
Troy
MYTILENE

Mount Ida in
the distance.

[MS: N9_leaf_015r]

Plato & Diogenes were
captured by pirates &
publicly sold as slaves
in the market place of
Athens—Plato brought
$500. by way of ransom.

Throughout Greece
there were more slaves
than freemen. If a
man could publicly
convict his freedman
of ingratitude he could
enslave him again.

Noon—passed
abreast of Ancient
Troy, & not long
afterward passed
the entered the Dar-
danelles Dardanelles (or Helles-
pont Hellespont )—& after this
passed the harbor
[MS: N9_leaf_015v] whence Agamem-
non’s Agamemnon’s fleet sailed to
the siege of Troy.

Further along, the
tomb of Hecuba on
one side & Ajax on
the other.

Pericles was buried in
the Ceramicus, the place set
apart for such as fell in
battle—a great honor, as
he did not die o in battle.

[MTP: N&J1_393]

Plato—Aristotle,—
Solon—Themistocles—
Demosthenes—Diogenes
—Socrates—Isocrates—
Phocion—Pythagoras—Euripides.
Praxiteles. Zeuxis painter—Pindar—Phidias
—Euclid.

Diogenes going about with
his lantern in the moonlight,
did not tackle our party.

[MS: N9_leaf_016r]

At Athens we laid in
a stock of honey from
Hymettus.

The Athenians chose
ten Generals to command
their armies every year.
—Philip of Macedon said
they were fortunate—
they could find ten every
year, but he had never
been able to find but one

[MTP: N&J1_394]

We saw the remains
of the w sea-wall built
by Themistocles & which
inclosed the harbors of
the Piraeus & the Muny-
chiae Munychiae —was 6½ m. long
& 60 ft high.—about 10 ft thick

Saw his tomb, also.

[MS: N9_leaf_016v]

Pericles had them built. The Propyliaeeaa is Doric
—cost $2,000,000. (a sum
which exceeded a year’s reve-
nue revenue of the Republic.

Temple of Victory on
the left.

(Statues in citadel of Pericles,
Phormio, Iphicrates, Timotheus,
& other Athenian Generals.)

(Yonder the colossal statue
of Minerva (bronze,) which
Athenians raised after Marathon.)

First architects of Xerxes
bridge of boats over the
Hellespont were beheaded
because the bridge broke
away—the hint was not
lost on the second lot
—no shoddy contracts
on that—Xerxes host
2,5600,000 men & 2,500,000
camp followers crossed it.

[MS: N9_leaf_017r]

Among the statues in
the citadel was one of
olive-wood so ancient
it was said to have
fallen from Heaven.

⟦Just entering the Helles-
pont Hellespont —3 or 4 m. wide— guard-
ed guarded on either side by Turkish
castles flying the crescent flag.
—We are gaining faster on
the French steamer since
we have houist hoisted
main & main topsails &
jib—will catch him
in an hour.

See a camel train
on shore with the glass.⟧

Parthenon (an which is
another Temple of Mi-
nerva Minerva )—It is Doric

[MS: N9_leaf_017v]

Parthenon 226 ft long,
100 wide.—69 70 high. —all of
gold & ivory,—$1,100,000 worth of gold.

[MTP: N&J1_395]

Statue of Minerva
by Phidias, in complete
armor & lance—36 ft high
—all of gold & ivory—$1,100,000 worth
of gold.

Square, deep tombs cut
in the solid rock all
about before you get to
the Museum & also in the
Museum hill (which is a
high long rock only sep-
arated separated from the Acropo-
lis Acropolis & the Areopagus by a
little narrow ravine.

[MS: N9_leaf_018r]

Dardana.

2 bells—afternoon—

drawing, labeled:
red-flag—white crescent
minaret—blue-topped
very old grey fort
City
water betteries—white
Sea
Dardanelles
Fort

Stopped here for
the health officer to
come aboard.

[MS: N9_leaf_018v]

drawing, labeled:
Ionian Sea
Greece
Aegean Sea
Europe
Dardanelles
Athens
Troy
Candia
Mytilene

[MS: N9_leaf_019r]

drawing, labeled:
Dardanelles
Sea of Marmora
Constantinople
Bosphorus
Skutari
Black Sea or Euxine
Asia Minor

[MS: N9_leaf_019v]

Aug. 16.

Entered the Sea
of Marmora at 6 5 in
the afternoon, if I re-
member remember rightly.

[MTP: N&J1_396]

The Viceroy of Egypt
passed us in his light-
ning lightning yacht, like we
were standing still—
waved his hand to us.
He looks a good deal
like his uncle (or his
brother—which?) the
Sultan of Turkey.

[MTP: N&J1_397]

Night—Rev. Mr.
Bullard lectured on
Athens, & I said a
few words—same
subject.

[MS: N9_leaf_020r]

Turkey

Constantinople.

Aug. 17—Reached
Constae at daylight,
& anchored in the
mouth of the Golden
Horn.

Standing on the
Military Tower in
the Plaza—

drawing, labeled:
Pera
Galeta
Bridge
Bosphorous
Scutari
Bridge
Gardens of the Seraglio
Stamboul
Bazaar
Sea of Marmora
Princes Is.
St. Sophia
7 Towers

[MS: N9_leaf_020v]
[MTP: N&J1_398]

Turkey

Visited the celebrated
Mosque of San Sophia, near
the Grand Seraglio Gardens,
but found nothing there to
go into ecstasies over. It
is an immense structure,
& its dome is very pec-
uliar peculiar , being as great in
diameter as St Peter’s,
perhaps, but enough
flatter to be remarkable.

The It seems curious
to see these eastern devo-
tees devotees going through with
their extravagant cere-
monies ceremonies in a church
that was built for
Christian worship, &
this strikes one more
than anything else.

The painted bronze
open-work capitals of
the columns & the fila-
[MS: N9_leaf_021r] gree inlaying above
them is curious, but
not fascinating. The
numerous pillars in one
piece, of precious mar-
bles marbles , are not lovely, be-
cause because they are so chipped
& dinted & rusty & unat-
tractive unattractive . The g

The gaudy mosaics
in the dome & their gro-
tesque grotesque Turkish writing are
not pretty.

The vast gilt circular
wooden signs at the
corners are not hand-
some handsome .

Neither are the num-
berless numberless coarse oil mugs
for tapers suspended
everywhere.

I had to enter bare
foot, & caught cold & got
my feet stuck up with
[MS: N9_leaf_021v]

Turkey

the abominations that
besmear the paved
floors everywhere.

It was not be-
witching bewitching to see a num-
ber number of dirty varlets in
all manner of absurd
costumes sitting tailor-
fashion on the floor,
reciting their lessons.

I don’t think much
of San Sophia.

One other mosque
was large, & had pro-
digious prodigious marble pil-
lars pillars (4) supporting
its dome which were
some 30 ft in diameter
& very massive & im-
posing imposing .

In another they
had nothing more re-
markable remarkable to show
[MS: N9_leaf_022r] than several thousand
unclean tame pigeons
& some frowsy great
trees in the open court
of the mosque.

Obelisk—

Egyptian, was perfect—
4,000 yrs old, 70 ft high,
12 or 15 at the base—20,
maybe—one solid piece
of granite & all its figures
& hyeroglyphs unmarred
by time.

[MTP: N&J1_399]

Grecian Obelisk—

Old, ratty, coarse stones,
ragged, shaky—will
tumble some day.

Column of Serpents—
Bronze & broken—not
astonishing.

[MS: N9_leaf_022v]

Turkey

Fire tower—high—
nothing more—noble
view of the city from it.

A better from the
Sea or the Bosphorus.

New Moorish gate-
way gateway —handsome.

1,000 columns under
ground—curious—
nothing more.

Janizaries—

Grotesque wax-work mu-
seum museum —could have
survived without seeing
it.

Turkish Singer—
funny.

Sultanic Tombs—fine.

[MS: N9_leaf_023r]
[MTP: N&J1_400]

Women rather pretty
with their veiled faces
& flowing Oriental
robes—but, flitting about
in the magnificent dis-
tances distances of the dim
arches of the great ba-
zaars bazaars , look horribly like
the shrouded dead abroad
in the earth.

The Bazaars of Stam-
boul Stamboul —wonderful.

The Dogs of Con-
stantinople Constantinople more so.

Embroidered Jackets of
gold & purple, blue &
crimson—splendid—

Persian shawls &
fabrics—& Turkish—
gorgeous.

[MS: N9_leaf_023v]

Turkey

Some people wear
a fez, here.

“Can recommend my son
as a smart boy & terrific
liar—can cheat deftly”
—Turkish.

Haldeman’s dauby
pictures & his walking
arsenal.

Porters.

Grape-sellers

Seed-merchants.

Water-sellers.

Turkish dinner.

[MTP: N&J1_401]

Cripples.

Terrific Costumes.

The lovely Bospho-
rous Bosphorus , with its exquisite
white marble palaces—
they are palaces.

[MS: N9_leaf_024r]

The Bosphorus

New Palaces—gems
of noble arc elegant
architecture—beat
all in France & Italy.

Bohemian singing
girls & beer.

Spinning & howling
Dervishes.

75 Mahometans
converted—used to be
(suspected) imprisonment & death
—is imprisonment yet.

They say it has cost
$2 000 000 for each Chi-
nese Chinese convert—no better
here.

40,000 suspected con-
verts converts here in Con.

[MS: N9_leaf_024v]
[MTP: N&J1_402]

Turkey

Sultan goes to Mosque
on Fridays.

All Greeks & Arme-
nians Armenians Christians.—thieves.

Pera is Christian.

Population of Con-
stantinople Constantinople 1,000,000—
⅓. Christians.

On account of
sympathy with Crete,
Americans in bad
odor here.

All foreign consu-
lates consulates fine but Ameri-
can American —bad—people in
Europe & Asia respect
style.

[MS: N9_leaf_024r]

Sailed for Crimea 20th.

New Palace on the
Asiatic side of the
beatiful Bosphorus (3
m. wide,) is built on spot
where Constantine erected
gold cross to commemorate
his conversion. When
Turks took the place &
began to build, many
thought he would declare
himself Christian when
finished, & waited to bap-
tise baptise their Children then.
They are waiting yet.

Dan & Jack Van
Nostrand have re-
mained remained behind in Con-
stantinople Constantinople .

Got letter in Con-
stantinople Constantinople in mourn-
ing mourning envelop—bad custom.

[MS: N9_leaf_024v]

Beardless Jack has
heard of a fearful
Turkish custom & is
scared.

[MTP: N&J1_403]

Smoking Narghilis.

Turkish Bath.

“Makaloff & Seralgio”

bottom half of page left blank

[MS: N9_leaf_025r]

Russia

drawing, labeled:
Black Sea
Inkerman
Sebastopol
Fort
English
Arm of Sea
Redan
Tu Russians
Balaklava
600
Valley
Malakoff
Russians
Arm of Sea
French

[MS: N9_leaf_025v]

Russia

Spent a day at
Sebastopol.

Melancholy
place—wilderness
of battered-down
houses—look like
forest of broken
chimneys.

Not 3 dozen
habitable dwellings
—they all new.

Visited Redan,
Malakoff &c. &
picked up cannon
balls & other light
relics.

They say that
during the 3-days
assault of the
Malakoff by the
French it changed
hands 3 times.

[MS: N9_leaf_026r]

The English took
the Redan & then
turned their guns
upon the Malakoff.

It is several
miles out to Bala-
klava Balaklava , & only a
mile or two to
Inkermann down
by the sea.

Russia claimed
the exclusive right
to put a new dome
on the
[MTP: N&J1_404] Church of
the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem, &
France claimed
the same— Eng-
land England wanted a
[MS: N9_leaf_026v]

Within the year, treaty, so the 4 3
build it in partnership

chance at Rus-
sia Russia —hence the
war. Sounds
as absurd as
the Crusades.

By the treaty of
Paris Russia can-
not cannot rebuild her great
docks & naval works
here—she infringes
a little on the law,
though.

Stories of the
havoc of the bom-
bardment bombardment .

A large number
of handsome young
English & Russian
ladies visited the ship
[MS: N9_leaf_027r]

Russia

& spent the after-
noon afternoon . They were
delighted at her fine
appointments &
great size. If we
could have brought
them back we might
have taken them to
Odessa. It was
pleasant to hear
the them our own
language again.

[MTP: N&J1_405]

Several officers gentlemen
insisted on our visit-
ing visiting the Emperor of
Russia with the ship,
—said they would en-
sure ensure us a superb re-
ception reception by him, & would
[MS: N9_leaf_027v] not only telegraph
but send a courier
to notify him we
were coming. He
is spending the heated
months at a little
watering-place
30 miles from here.

For certain
reasons we declined,
& everybody was
sorry enough, very
naturally.

This has been
the pleasantest af-
ternoon afternoon we have
had for m a good
while.

Everywhere the
prints of cannon-
balls are in these
stone-walls—some
[MS: N9_leaf_028r]

Russia

as neat as if cut.
Some balls still
stick in the walls
& from them iron
stains run.

It is a completely
destroyed town—
not one of its old
houses was left
standing in that
fearful 18 months
siege.

They sell Cir-
cassian Circassian girls yet
in Constantinople,
but the markets
are private.

[MS: N9_leaf_028v]

Left Sebastopol
at 8 P.M.

drawing, labeled:
Front of Odessa
Hill
Gate 　 Gate 　
sea 　 Odessa
pier 　 shipping
island

[MS: N9_leaf_029r]

Russia

Aug. 253—Anchored
before Odessa at 3 PM.
Devil of a time getting
the officials to let us go
ashore. They have
got all our passports.

Fine town—broad,
well papved streets—
fine large houses, sub-
stantial substantial , & good archi-
tecture architecture —stone—fine
stores—gas—pretty
women, fashionably
dressed—100,000 in-
habitants inhabitants .

I guess a Dan is
well tired of Con-
stantinople Constantinople by this
time.

[MS: N9_leaf_029v]

Aug. 25—On
our way back to
JYoltea to call on the
Emperor of Russia,
who has telegraphed
the Governor General
of Odessa concerning
the matter & the thing
is all right.

[MTP: N&J1_406]

Oh, h—! wh
Geeminy, what a
stir there is!—what
a calling of meetings!
—what an appoint-
ing appointing of committees!—
whiat a furbishing-
up of swallow-
tail coats!

[MS: N9_leaf_030r]

Your Imperial Majesty:

We are a handful of
private citizens of
America, traveling
simply for recreation,
& unostentatiously,
as becomes our un-
official unofficial condition state,
& therefore we have
no excuse to tender
for presenting our-
selves ourselves before your
Majesty, save the
desire of offering
our grateful ack-
nowledgments acknowledgments to the
lord of a realm
which, through good
& through evil re-
port report , has been the
steadfast friend of
the land we love so
well.

[MS: N9_leaf_030v]
[MTP: N&J1_407]

We could not
presume to take a step
like this, did we not
know well that the
words we speak here,
& the sentiments where-
with wherewith they are freighted,
are but the reflex
of the thoughts & the
feelings of all our
countrymen, from
the green hills of New
England to the snowy
peaks shores of the far
Pacific. We are few
in number, but we utter
the voice of a nation!

One of the brightest
pages that haves graced
the world’s history since
written history had birth,
was recorded by your
Majesty’s hand when it loosed the
[MS: N9_leaf_031r] bonds of twenty million
serfs; and Americans
can but esteem it a
privilege to do honor
to a ruler who has
wrought so great a
deed. The lesson
that was taught us
then, we have profited
by, & are free in truth,
to-day, as we even
as we were before
in name. America
owes much to Russia
—is indebted to her
in many ways—and
chiefly for her un-
wavering unwavering friendship
in seasons of our great-
est greatest need. That that
friendship may still be
hers in times to come, we
confidently pray; that she
[MS: N9_leaf_031v] is & will be grateful
to Russia & to her sov-
ereign sovereign for it, we know
full well; that she will
ever forfeit it by any
premeditated, unjust
act, or unfair course,
it were treason to
believe.

⟦Signed⟧

Sam. L. Clemens, Ch’n

Committee

TD. Crocker

AN. Sandford,

Col. Kinney

Wm Gibson

On behalf of the
passengers of the U.S.
Steamer Quaker City,
C. C. Duncan Com-
manding Commanding .

Yalte, Russia,
Aug. 25, 1867.

[MS: N9_leaf_032r]

That job is over.—
Writing addresses to Em-
perors Emperors is not my strong
suit. However, if it is
not as good as it might
be, it don’t signify—
the other committeemen
ought to have helped
write it—they had

[MTP: N&J1_408] nothing else to do, & I
had my hands full.—
But for holding most
bothering with this
matter, I would have
caught up entirely
with my N. Y. Tri-
bune Tribune correspondence,
& nearly up with the
San Francisco corr.

The reception of
our party by the Em-
peror Emperor is to come off
at the summer palace
[MS: N9_leaf_032v] at noon to-morrow.—

Aug 26.—The
imperial carriages
were in waiting at 11,
& at 12 we were at
the palace.

At In 5 minutes
the Emperor & Em-
press Empress , the Grand Du-
chess Duchess Marie & the
2 little gGrand Duke
appeared & welcomed
the party pleasantly.

The Consul for
Odessa read the ad-
dress address , & the Czar said
frequently “Good—very
good indeed”—and
at the close: “I am
very, very grateful.”

[MTP: N&J1_409]

After talking
half an hour the
[MS: N9_leaf_033r] imperial party con-
ducted conducted us all through
the palace & then all
through the young
Crown Prince’s beau-
tiful beautiful palace.

By this time it
was after 1, & an invi-
tation invitation came from the
Grand Duke Michael
to visit his gardens,
park & palace, and
breakfast with him,
which we did.

Prince Dalgorou-
ki Dalgorouki , went along, & so
did that jolly Count
Festetics, who is to mar-
ry marry the Governor Gen-
eral’s General’s daughter. So
also, the Lord High Ad-
miral Admiral of Russia &
a number of the nobil-
ity nobility of both sexes, con-
[MS: N9_leaf_033v] nected with the Emperor’s
household.

But the Grand
Duke Michael is a
rare brick!—and
his wife is one of the
very pleasantest of
all these pleasant
people—& both are
exceedingly sociable.

What happened
in the park—& again
in the court of the pal-
ace palace where the fountain
was & the flowers—
& above all the occu-
rence occurence under the porch
which has the caryat-
ides caryatides in imitation of
the Temple of Erecthus
at Athens—these were
rich—they must be
never be trusted to
treacherous paper—
[MS: N9_leaf_034r] memory will do—I
guess no one in the
world who could ap-
preciate appreciate a joke
would be likely to
forget them.

[MTP: N&J1_410]

We had not been
at the Grand Duke’s
long when the Em-
press Empress & the Grand
Duchess Marie came,
& shortly afterward
the Emperor him-
self himself . He looks much
nobler than the Em-
peror Emperor Napoleon, & a
hundred times more
so than the Sultan
of Turkey. Remained half
a day, nearly.

Aug. 27—Carpets
were spread on the pier
& the Governor General
& family came on board
[MS: N9_leaf_034v] the ship (we saluted
with 9 guns,) & after-
ward afterward :

Prince Dalgorouki, the
Grand Chamberlain.

G Baron Wrangel,
former Ambassador.

Baron Ungern-
Sternberg, the Director
in Chief of the imperial
railways.

Count Festetics
of the household.

General Todtleben,
the idoli honored de-
fender defender of Sebastopol
all during the siege.

[MTP: N&J1_411]

And a large num-
ber number of army & navy
officrs & titled & un-
titled untitled ladies & gen-
tlemen gentlemen .

Shampagne
blow-out.

[MS: N9_leaf_035r]

Black Sea.

Aug. 28.—Sailed
for Constantinople
last night, saluting
as we left—& fire-
works fireworks . That beau-
tiful beautiful little devil I
danced with at the
ball in that im-
possible impossible Russian
dance, still runs
in my head. Ah
me!—if I had only
known how to talk
Russian! However,
she must have known
I was saying some-
thing something with all that
absurd English which
she couldn’t under-
stand understand .

All day the ladies
bathed naked in full
[MS: N9_leaf_035v]

Constantinople.

view of the ship.
They don’t consider
it any harm, I sup-
pose suppose . At Odessa
all ages & sexes
bathed together.

Aug 29—Passed
through the beautiful
Bosphorus just
after daylight &
anchored away
up in the Golden
Horn nearly to the
lower bridge. Been
on shore & found
Dan, & Foster, Jack
Van Nostrand &
Col. Haldeman.

The American
Minister Resident
(Mr. Morris,) is to
drink wine on board
to-night.

[MS: N9_leaf_036r]
[MTP: N&J1_412]

Constantinople

Our imperial
visit has had a good
effect. It worries the
Sublime Porte a good
deal. It is well, for
the offensive resolu-
tions resolutions of Congress con-
cerning concerning the Cretan
insurrection have
just been received,
& they it may prevent
an offensive reply—
may even avert war
—who knows?

Aug. 30.—Here
yet.

Aug. 31—Ditto.

Sept. 1—Ditto.

[MS: N9_leaf_036v]

Sea of Scutari.

Sept. 2.—Went over
to Scutari—took horse
& went on top of moun-
tain mountain back of city— beau-
tiful beautiful view of Con— Bos-
phorous Bosphorus —islands in Sea
of Marmora—saw al-
most almost to Black Sea &
&c &c &c.

Grapes, coffee & green
English walnuts & the
house below.

Found a gold mine
—good live quartz—the gold
in snuff-colored sulphurrets
—ought to be very valu-
able valuable here where labor is
so cheap. Its presence
is unsuspected.

[MTP: N&J1_413]

Dr Mattheosian

[MS: N9_leaf_037r]

Constantinople

Loitered on the bridge
with Davis & watched the
porters rest their pro-
digious prodigious loads.

Sept. 3.—Here 17
days.

The Sultan not pleased
about our visit to the Czar.
—says Americans show
no disposition to visit
him.

He is an ignorant,
unrefined Turk, & his
mother is chief over him.

He was “kept back”
because it was not
supposed that he would
be ever reach the throne.

His nephews will
succeed him—not his
son.

[MS: N9_leaf_037v]

Sea of Marmora.

Sept. 3—Tried to
leave Constantinople
at 7 PM, but, in dodg-
ing dodging a schooner, whose
mainsail we tore with
our bowsprit, we
fouled a buoy, just
abreast the Grand Se-
raglio Seraglio (but within the Golden
Horn,) & drifted down on
to the bowsprit of a
Beuctra boat—which
cut our starboard quar-
ter-boat quarter-boat clear in two.
Maybe it is well we
bought so many caiques.
We got clear at 11
o’clock (of course we
had to let go the anchor
at first & it fouled
the buoy) & in a few
moments we nothing
[MS: N9_leaf_038r] but five miles of lights
elevated in pyramids
lines & semi-circles
—arches—the last
of Constantinople

[MTP: N&J1_414]

Biography
of
Samson
for N. Y. Tribune

This Sultan confisca-
ted confiscated the house of his shoddy
minister of public build-
ings buildings

[MS: N9_leaf_038v]

Smyrna.

8 bells—AM—Sept. 5—
Curious multitude of salt
hills on Syrian shore
above Smyrna.

Fields—villages of
scattering houses or tents
that look like l sugar
loaves through the
glasses.

Smyrna bay is
very deep—shoal, too.

Country, low hills
—rolling.

Afternoon—officers
of gun-boat Swatara
came aboard.

Ascended Citadel Hill
(Mt Pagus of Scripture)

Went to Caravan
bridge to see the camel
trains come in.

Oyster-veins in the
hill-side.

[MS: N9_leaf_039r]
[MTP: N&J1_415]

Ephesus.

Tomb of Polycarp,
the marty of the 2d cen-
tury century (or the first.)

Ran till pretty late,
with the off’rs.

“7” churches (apocalyptic) here

Sept. 6—All hands
took cars & went to
ruins of ancient Ephe-
sus Ephesus 45 miles hence.

Another of the 7
churches of Asia
was here.

Apollo & Diana
were born here; here
the God Pan lurked
in the Corassus & the
Pion hills; here Bac-
chus Bacchus & Hercules fought
against the Amazons;
here Hannibal, Scipio,
Lysander, Sylla, Cicero,
Alexander the Great,
Antiochus, & many ano-
[MS: N9_leaf_039v]

Ephesus—Syria.

ther man great in an-
cient ancient history tarried; here
(& at Smyrna,) Homer
was born; here Bru-
tus Brutus & Cassius lay in
refuge in the temple,
& Antony & Cleopatra
held their gorgeous
revels.

Here stood the splen-
did splendid Temple of Diana of
Ephesus, the Seven one
of the Seven Wonders
of the World.

Here Paul & John
preached; here the Vir-
gin Virgin Mary lived with
John & here both
died & were buried.

Here is the tomb of
St Luke the disciple.

Here Mary Magda-
lene Magdalene lies buried.

Here John the Bap-
[MS: N9_leaf_040r]

Syria. 　　 Ephesus.

tist labored & his
font is shown.

From these noble
ruins many a church
in Christendom & many
a mosque has been
supplied with its grand-
est grandest , its costil costliest, its
most enduring columns.

[MTP: N&J1_416]

Aug Sept. 8.—

Isle of Samos

St. Paul.

Isle of Patmos

St John’s Revelations

Isle of Rhodes,
where the Colossus
stood.

St. Paul

Isle of Cyprus—

Be◊ at Beirut Sept. 110

[MS: N9_leaf_040v]

Syria.

Sept. 11.—Left Beirut
for Jerusalem at 3 PM.

Our company is
composed of 8 persons:

Church, of Ohio,

WR Denny, Va,

Jack Van Nostrand, N.J.

Davis, Staten Island,

Dan. Slote, New York,

Moulton, Missouri,

Dr Birch, do.

Sam Clemens, Cal.

All mounted on horses.

[MTP: N&J1_417]

Abraham, of Malta,
is Chief Dragoman, &
Mohamed ——— of
Alexandria, Egypt is
1st Assistant.

Camp Equipage:
3 sleeping tents; 1 kitchen
tent, & 1 eating tent—all
large, finely furnished
& handsome.

[MS: N9_leaf_041r]

Syria

Our caravan num-
bers numbers 24 mules & horses,
& 14 serving men—28
men all told.

Camped fi that
night on high ground
of the Lebanon foot-
hills foothills , 10 or 12 miles
out of Beirut.

[MS: N9_leaf_041v]

Noah’s Tomb. 　 Syria.

Sept. 12—Broke
camp at 7 A.M. just as
Col. Foster & Col. Hyde
went by in the diligence
bound for Damascus.
We passed the Leary party
& the Bond party during
the day.

Came down into
the great Lebanon Valley
or Coelo-Syria at noon
& rested & lunched at an
old Khan. Far away
on the right, the snow-
spotted peak of Mount
Hermon.

Passed up the Valley &
camped on 1. side under
the dews of Hermon.—first
passing through a dirty
Arab village & visiting
the tomb of Noah, of
Deluge notoriety.

[MS: N9_leaf_042r]

Pilgrimage

Sept 11—Camped
at 6 PM.—10 or 12 miles
out of Beirut on the Mount-
ains Mountains of Lebanon—
splendid supper &
tents.

26 pack mules

Dragoman & 19 ser-
vingmen servingmen .

8 of ourselves—

Col. Denny, Church, &
Dr Birch, in one large
tent.

Jack Van Nostrand,
Davis & Moulton in
the other.

Dan Slote & I in
the small one.

5 tents in all—3 for
us—one for kitchen &
one for eating saloon.

[MS: N9_leaf_042v]

Syria —Sep. 13.

Ruins of Baalbec.

[MTP: N&J1_418]

Broke camp◊ at
6.30 AM, crossed the valley,
& at 11 reached the mag-
nificent magnificent ruins of Baal-
bec Baalbec , marched about the
ruined temples & the quar-
ries quarries 3 or 4 hours (the (found Bullard, Mrs. Fair-
banks Fairbanks , James, & Beach &
daughter there, &c met Jack-
son Jackson & party Beirut bound ),
& the Leary & Bond parties
arrived afterwards fagged
out.)—then departed.

Rode 7 hours, & partly
through wild, rocky scenery,
& camped at 10.30 on the
banks of a pretty stream
near a Syrian village—
2 horses lame & the others
worn out.

[MS: N9_leaf_043r]

Syria

Sept. 14—Broke
camp at 7 A.M. & make
a fearful trip through
the —— Zeb Dana valley &
the rough mountains
(temples carved in them)
& finally along a
beautiful stream in a
chasm, lined, thick
with pomegranate,
fig, olive & quince or-
chards orchards , & nooned an
hour at 1 PM at the
celebrated fountain of
Figia, second in size
in Syria, & the coldest
water in the world.—
Bathed in it. It is the
principal source of
the Abana river, & is
only ½ mile long to
where it joins.

Beautiful place—
[MS: N9_leaf_043v]

Syria 　 Sep. 14

Where Baalam’s ass lived—holy ground.

gi giant trees all around,
—vast stream gushes
from under the mountain
in a torrent. Over it is a
very ancient ruin,
with no known history—
supposed to have been
for the worship of the
fountain.

[MTP: N&J1_419]

Damascus.

Left the fountain at 1 P.
M. (that infernal fountain
took us at least 2 hours
out of our way .,) & reached
Mahomet’s look-out place
over the wonderful garden
& plain of Damascus &
the beautiful city, in time
to get a good long look
& descend into the city be-
fore before the gates were closed.

[MS: N9_leaf_044r]

Sep. 15. 　 Syria—Damascus 　 Sep. 16.

Population 200,000.

Sept. 15.—Taken very
sick at 4 AM.

Sept. 16—Abed all day
yesterday—got enough
of Damascus. Don’t
want to see any more
of it. Took a jackass
& a b an Arab to drive it, &
visited “the street called
Straight”—A Judas’ houses,
where St. Paul lay blind
after his adventure—
house & well of Ananias
(these are genuine, at any
rate,) the gentleman disciple who
when went & invi ested Paul
with the sacred office & as
commanded by the
Savior—the house of
Naaman the leper, whom
[MS: N9_leaf_044v]

Sep. 16 　　 Syria—Damascus

the prophet Elijah (or
Elisha) ordered to wash
7 times in Jordan & so
cured him .—the place in
the city wall (evidently
old Roman wall,) where
Paul was let down in
the basket & made his
escape toward Jeru-
salem Jerusalem when the Jews

[MTP: N&J1_420] sought his life— out-
side outside the wall, the tomb
(red chicken-coop) of
St George, a person
gate-keeper beheaded
for conniving at
Paul’s escape— fur-
ther further out, the hole ( genu-
ine genuine & ancient) where
Paul lay hid till he got
a chance to shove,)
—& the great tomb of the
[MS: N9_leaf_045r]

Syria— 　　 Sep. 16

5,000 Christians mas-
sacred massacred in Damascus
7 years ago.

Enough of Damascus.

Sept. 16—Left Da-
mascus Damascus about noon 10 or 11 —
4 hours out, saw the
spot where Paul was mi-
raculously miraculously converted.

Nimrod’s Tomb.

4,000 years old. The first King.

Camped at an Arab
village (Kafir Something),
where Nimrod the Mighty
Hunter, the builder of
Babylon & the Tower of
Babel lies buried. He
was a fine old Sport & a
great linguist.

[MS: N9_leaf_045v]

Holy Land.

Sept. 17.—Edged in to the
Holy Land proper, to-day.

After noonday lunch,
climbed the a great
cone 1,000 feet high, which
overlooks the ancient ruined
city of Cesarea Phillippi,
Dan, & the great plain
wherein are visible some
little streams—sources
of the Jordan. The
mountain is in Bashan
& is covered with olive
groves & the oaks of
Bashan. It is crowned
with the grandest old ruined
castle in the world—1,000
feet long by 200 wide,
& its walls & turrets
have been from 30 to 60
feet high .—all of mas-
sive massive dressed stone ma-
[MS: N9_leaf_046r] sonry with beveled edges
—very well preserved—
some of the stones 12
ft long & 3 thick—

[MTP: N&J1_421]

Grand portcullis—old
inscriptions—ruined
vaults, arches, dungeons,
tunnels, reservoir—
goatherd lives there now.

No history supposd Phenician —castle
first spoken of in the
Crusades, but was very
old then—Nureddin
took it in 1135—it was
abandoned in 17 17th cent.

Banias.

This place—where we
are encamped, is beautiful
with olive groves, & the foun-
tintain fountintain which is the main
source of the Jordan—
[MS: N9_leaf_046v]

Jordan hard road to travel.

we washed in it & drank
of its waters. The foun-
tain fountain comes from a great
grotto where the Greeks or
(& the Romans after them),
worshiped the god Pan
(hence the name, Panias)
& the niches are carved in
the rock still, & Greek in-
scriptions inscriptions .) At the same
place Herod the Great
erected a marble temple
to commemorate the
visit of Caesar Augustus
to the city, & changed the
city’s name to Cesarea
Phillippi, also.

Cesarea Phillippi

This & Banias are
one. A great, massive,
ruined citadel of 4 acres.

[MS: N9_leaf_047r]

Cesearea Philippi

Ruined arches, water-
ways waterways , bridges, columns,
capitals, &c, everywhere.

Hoof-prints deep in
old rocks.

This is the first place
we have ever seen, whose
pavements were trodden
by Jesus Christ. Here
he asked the disciples who
the people took him to be,
& asked Peter who he took
him to be—& Peter’s con-
fident confident answer elicited
that famous sentence
upon which all the vast
power & importance the
Church of Rome arra-
gates arragates to itself is founded:
“Thou art Peter & upon
this Rock &c—& what thou
shalt bind upon the earth
shall be bound in heaven” &c
[MS: N9_leaf_047v]

Holy Land. 　 Sep. 18

Here Christ cured a wo-
man woman who had had an
issue of blood for 3 7
years (now-a-days there
would have been an af-
fidavit affidavit published) and
near here—possibly
on the Castle hill, some
claim that the
　　　 Savior’s Ascension Transfig(?) took place.

[MTP: N&J1_422]

E Lake Hula—or The Waters of Meron.

Sept. 18.—Broke Camp
(at Cesarea Phillippi) at 7.15 AM
& an hour afterward came to the
Hill (½ m diam) ruins & fountain
of Tel’ el Kadi (Dan.) It is in
the great valley which is the northern
extremity of Palestine.

Dan.

It was first, ages ago, the Phoeni-
cian Phoenician Laish—a lot of Danites from
[MS: N9_leaf_048r]

30–31–2

Sodom, 600, came over, like
a pack of adventurers as
they were, captured the place
& lived theirre as sort of luxu-
rious luxurious agriculturists, till
Abraham hazed them in
after times.

The fountain is the
largest in Syria .—forms a
large pool then rushes off
a chief source of Jordan.
¶J The banks of the stream
are bordered thick with
oleanders & several other
shrubs.

We traveled a long
stretch (4 miles) of miserable
rocky road overrun by
water, & finally turned &
followed down the other
side of the valley
over a half-green half-rusty
country full of fine sheep,
[MS: N9_leaf_048v] bulls of Bashan & Be-
douin Bedouin Shepherds. The
Bed’s are descended from
A Esau, & scorn to live in
houses. Saw their tents.
Then through several
large Arab villages made
of coarse matting houses
shaped like an omnibus,
& finally after nooning
2 hours, reached a fountain
& mill abr well up a
& riding 2 hours along
a vast green swamp
that occupies the whole
width of the Valley, we
camped at last at a
fountain & mill well
down abreast of
Lake Hula, or the Waters
of Meronm of Bible fame

[MS: N9_leaf_049r]

Holy Land

Sept. 19—Left our
camp by the Waters of
Merom at 7 AM.

The Arabs threw
stones into the camp last
night & tried to stampede
the horses.

[MTP: N&J1_423]

Rode 2 hours over tol-
erably tolerably arable land (fast)
& came in sight of the

Sea of Galilee

Lake Genessareth,

Sea of Tiberias.

Shortly came to an old
Khan & in it examined
the arched pit called

Joseph’s Well,

where his brethren threw him.

Then over a horrible
rocky, barren desert
(like Nevada,) skulls with scattering goats & shep-
[MS: N9_leaf_049v] herds (with pipes,) &
past

Safed,

and close to that

Bethsaida

from which Christ
sent his disciples in a
boat, after the miracle
of 5 loaves

& 2 fishes,

performed at the other

Bethsaida,

which is above the mouth
of Jordan 2 miles & a
little to the eastward, &
where Andrew & several
other disciples hailed
from.

1 mile from Beth-
saida Bethsaida , we descended to
the sea at

Capernaum,

Christ’s dwelling-place,
where he performed a
[MS: N9_leaf_050r] great many miracles,
(Jairus’ daughter, I
think ,.) Some old
b crumbling ruins, there,
a ruined Khan & a
fig tree & fountain.
Arabs & camels.

Near here was the
miraculous draught of
fishes.

Tried to get a boat
& didn’t.

Took a bath.

Crossed a long,
rich, oleander plain
along the sea to

[MTP: N&J1_424]

Magdala,

the birth-place of
Mary Magdalene—
the rattiest, rustiest
dirtest little collection
of mud hovels, tattooed
women & sore-eyed
children in Palestine.
[MS: N9_leaf_050v]

Tiberias

One ruin in Magdala,
(with an old pipe,) was
good.

Thence along the
edge of a mountain
to Tiberias, another
nasty mud hovel vil-
lage village full of Arabs,
Jews & negroes.

It was built by
Herod Antipas, the
murderer of John
the Baptist, & named
after his friend the
Emperor Tiberias—
so it is only mentioned
in the New Testament.

Splendid stars—when blue
wave rolls nightly on Galilee.

The Sanhedrim
met here last, & for
300 years it was the
metropolis of the Jews
in Palestine. It has
been the abiding place
of many famous &
[MS: N9_leaf_051r] learned Jewish rab-
bins rabbins . They are here
buried. The

Warm Baths

2 miles below are men-
tioned mentioned by Pliny.

Opposite Tiberias
on the E side of the lake,
the swine ran down
into the sea.

Lake is surrounded
by steep, barren, light
brown hills 1500 ft high.

We have seen no
country between here
& Damascus capable
of supporting any such
populations as one gath-
ers gathers from the Bible.

The people of this
region in the Bible were
just as they are now—
[MTP: N&J1_425] ig-
norant ignorant , depraved, supersti-
tious superstitious , dirty, lousy, thieving
vagabonds.

[MS: N9_leaf_051v]

Holy Land.

Sept. 20.—Bathed
in Galilee before break-
fast breakfast . Passed through the
strange old town ( beau-
tiful beautiful porphyry columns
with flutings almost worn
away). Had a wretched
looking scalliwag im-
posed imposed upon us for a
guard by the shiek—a
beat with a long, harm-
less harmless silver-mounted
gun & 2 pistols.

Saw from the
top of the hill, Tiberias;
Sea of Galilee; Mag-
da Magda Capernaum; Beth-
saida Bethsaida ; Magdala, Hermon, place where
swine ran down; mouth
of Jordan; exit of ditto;
Mount Hermon; Safed;
Mount Tabor; part of battle of
Hattin; place where:

[MS: N9_leaf_052r]

“The Ephraimites not
being called upon to share
in the spoils of the Ammo-
nitish Ammonitish war, assembled a
mighty host to fight a-
gainst against Jeptha, Judge
of Israel; who, being
apprised of their ap-
proach approach , gathered to-
gether together the men of Ir
srael Irsrael & gave them battle
& put them to flight. To
make his victory the more
secure, he stationed guards
at the different fords and
passages of the Jordan,
with instructions to let
none pass who could not
say Shibboleth; the E-
phraimites Ephraimites being of a
different tribe, could
not frame to pronounce
the word, but called it
[MS: N9_leaf_052v] Sibboleth, & so betrayed
themselves. So forty-&-
four thousand fell at the
different fords & passa-
ges passages of the Jordan that day.”

[MTP: N&J1_426]

Mount Tabor.

Transfiguration.

It is mentioned all
through the Bible. New
Convent & ruins of an
old one built by the
Crusaders. Saw XX in
it. Also ruins of
Joshua’s time.

Saw from its sum-
mit summit , Galilee, Hermon,
Little Hermon, Gilboa,
where Saul & Jonathan
fell; Nain, Endor, — the
fountain of Jezreel,
the Plain of Ezdraelon,
where, Napoleon, the
[MS: N9_leaf_053r] Crusaders, the ancient
Jews & all the nations
of the earth have fought
at different times.

Then came to
Nazareth, where Christ
lived & carpentered till
30 of age (not allowed
by Jewish law to teach
sooner.

Glass windows,
—some 2-story—many
shops—many cone-
shaped mud hovels;
—camels & fantastic
Arabs & dirty children
—all around, the hills
that were familiar to
the eyes of Jesus—

Imagine Christ’s 30 years of life in the slow village of Nazareth

Saw the grotto of the
Annunciation—the
pillar miraculously
sustained—old columns
[MS: N9_leaf_053v] by Saint Helena, mother
of Constantine—

Grotto where lived
Joseph Mary & infant
Christ—

Workshop of Jo-
seph Joseph & Jesus.

Great Stone on which
Jesus & disciples rested
after return from Sea
of Galilee.

[MTP: N&J1_427]

Synagogue where
Jesus taught & from
which Jews took him
to throw him down
the mountain, when
he “passed from their
presence”.

Fountain of the
Virgin.

[MS: N9_leaf_054r]

Holy Land.

Sept. 21—Left Naz-
areth Nazareth & its chalk hills at 7.30, came down a
high, steep mountain & galloped
across the Plain of Esdraelon. to

Endor,

the rustiest of all, almost—
a few nasty mud cabins,—
many caves & holes in the
hill from which the fierce,
ragged, dirty inhabitants
swarmed. Pop. 250.

The Witch’s Cave

has a fig tree before it & a
spring within. Endor is a
fit place for a witch.

Camel dung on the roofs
& caked against the houses
to dry. Like to got yanked here
I suspect. Next, to

Nain,

an hour further—still
smaller town. Little Mosque
over spot once occupied
[MS: N9_leaf_054v] by widow’s house. Grave-
yard Graveyard —very old & ratty— ex-
itsists exitsists yet, & place shown
where corpse was passing
through city wall when
Christ resurrected it. Next around end of

Little Hermon

[MTP: N&J1_428]

to El Fulah Castle Shunem,

(cruse of oil
—Elisha.—
same widow

(lemon orchards & dung),
where woman built shanty
on wall for Elisha & he
raised her dead son. Think
Samuel lived or was born
here—doubtful. Next
to

Ancient Ruined Castle

celebrated in the Crusades (this
should have come before
Shunem) & place where
Napoleon won a splendid
victory over the Syrians
(Turks). Next, crossed the
Valley of Jezreel (which
[MS: N9_leaf_055r] is an arm of Esdraelon)
to

City of Jezreel,

on the hill, where Ahab
King of Judah lived in
splendor with his awful
heifer Jezebel, who swore
away a fellow’s life who would
not sell his valley vineyard
to her & then took possession
—on account of which a she
fell under a curse.

Jehu the mighty rider,
“rode furiously” (couldn’t
done it anywhere but in
this plain), captured the
city, threw Jez over the
walls & she was eaten
by dogs. Went next to the

Fountain of Jezreel,

Where Gideon slipped o up on
the Midianites & Amale-
[MS: N9_leaf_055v] kites with his 300 who
lapped like dogs, & with
candles, pitchers & trum-
pets trumpets , & made 15,000 (30,?)
slay themselves.

Here Saul camped,
while the Philistines lay
at Shunem (big advan-
tage advantage of slope all the
way.) In the night he
passed over left shoul-
der shoulder of Little Hermon
& to Endor, where witch
called up Samuel, who
proph. his defeat. Next
day he & Jonathan & 2
other sons fled over Mt.
Gilboa (over our heads),
& the 3 were killed & Saul
fell on his sword, thus
making the throne to David.

Around corner of
this Gilboa Esdraelon is what stands
for the Armageddon of
[MS: N9_leaf_056r] Scripture. Megiddo Here Neco-
Pharaoh of Egypt gained
splendid victory over Josiah,
Israelitish King.

This Esdraelon is
called the battle-field
of the nations. 11 sepa-
rate separate & distinct nations
have fought in it.
Here Deborah & Barak
beat Sisera (nail in
head by Jael) Jud 4–12, 24
Gideon Jud. 6–7. Saul (last
battle with Philistines)
1 Sam. 31. Benhadad,
Syrian King, defeated
here by Ahab 1 K, 22.
Josiah K of Juda, routed
& put to death by Egyp.
King 2 K 23–29. 2
Chron. 35–22. Bona-
parte Bonaparte . Think of all
these marshaled at once
in this great level plain
[MS: N9_leaf_056v] 25 m long & 8 broad!—
the Assyrians & Persians,
the Jews & Gentiles, Cru-
saders Crusaders & Saracens, Egyp-
tians Egyptians , Turks, Arabs, and
Franks—in divers cos-
tumes costumes , a splendid array!
Call up the shadowy war-
riors warriors & deploy them again
on the great plain under
the moon! 5,000,000.

From uplands can
see without a glass, El Fuleh, Tabor, Naza-
reth Nazareth , Carmel, Grait & Little
Hermon, depression of
Jordan, Jezreel, Shunem,

Next to

El Genin, where

wh we are camped. (Dr.
Jackson & Payne are here,
& the Pacha of Akka with
a great retinue & many
[MS: N9_leaf_057r] camels. Crocker party
have gone on to Shechem.

The guard’s empty
pistol.

Armed gallants at
Jezreel fountain

Women tattooed on
arms, hands, chin, lips,
& sometimes on cheeks.

Sept. 22—

Left Genin at 1 AM.
Some time before day-
light daylight , passed near another
place where Joseph’s
brethren pitted him.

Samaria.

About noon as
[MS: N9_leaf_057v] after passing over a
succession of moun-
tain mountain tops (saw the Med-
iterranean Mediterranean Sea 40 miles
distant) & many Bib-
lical Biblical cities (in which
the inhabitants looked
savage & would have
liked to throw stones
(women w & babies
with elaborate coin
headdresses,) we
came to the singularly
terraced hills which
shewed that we were
out of Galilee & into

[MTP: N&J1_430]

Samaria.

Climbed a hill to visit
the ruins of the city where
the woman of Samaria
conversed with Christ
& gave him to drink
—where the good Samar-
itan Samaritan (the only one that
[MS: N9_leaf_058r] ever lived there) dwelt,)
& where Elisha was when
Naaman came to be
cured of his leprosy.

It is rough stone
mud hovels & caml
dung, as usual—&
100 limestone colums
2 ft diam., 20 ft high
& no capitals or bases
perceptible—lowest
grade of architec-
ture architecture —
& I suppose
that this is all that
remains of Herod’s
boasted beautifying
of the city.

Ruins of a Christian
church of the Crusades
& the

Tomb of St John

the Evangelist—remains
transferred to cch of the
Annunciation, Genoa.

[MS: N9_leaf_058v]

The Arabs stoned
James here, & 2 stones
hit Miss Brown—our
party was not molested,
except that a small
boy threw a stone at the
Dr.

Nabulous.

Or Shechem. Lunched
there at 2 P.M. The
Crocker & Beach party
on the hill.

Ebal on the left
(hill of cursing) &
Gherison on the right
(hill of blessing)—
6 tribes on one & 6
on the other side when
the law was read & said
So mote it be.

Ebal is cultivated
with grapes— scatter-
ing scattering olives on the other
[MS: N9_leaf_059r] —disproves the en-
thusiasts enthusiasts who say the
accursed mountain
is barren & the other
blooming.

On the hill is the
oldest MSS in existence.
—Jewish law. Here

Here Jacob (& I
believe Abraham I-
saac Isaac , Joseph &c) lived,
& here Joshua gave the
people his dying injunc-
tions injunctions .

Very fertile narrow
valley—rich soil.

Camp

[MTP: N&J1_431]

Joseph’s Tomb
and
Jacob’s Well

Both well authenticate
—in valley 1 mile away.
Well 90 ft deep—solid rock.

[MS: N9_leaf_059v]

Holy Land.—

Camped at 7 PM
at an Arab Village—
Lubia (Libonia of the
Bible). Tents behind.
Slept on the ground
in front of an Arab
house. Lice, fleas,
horses, jackasses, chick-
ens chickens , & worse than all,
Arabs, for company
all night.

Sept. 22.

Broke camp at
2.30 AM & passed
the Severance party
in the foot of the
valley—lights burn-
ing burning in their tents.

After daylight
passed somewhere
[MS: N9_leaf_060r] in the neighborhood of

Shiloh,

where the ark of the
Covenant rested 300
years, &c. Ark taken to battle & it
& Eli’s 2 wicked sons
lost—Eli fell & broke his neck. I-chabod—the
glory of Israel is
departed.

J Beth-el

(House of God) Scene
of Jacob’s Ladder Dream
—nothing left now
but a shapeless mass
of ruins.

Villages of
Ramah,
Beroth & Mount
Nebo-Samuel

where Prophet Samuel
is buried—in full
sight from Jerusalem.

[MTP: N&J1_432]

Fountain of Beirah.

[MS: N9_leaf_060v]

—very ancient—out
in a plain white &
thick with stones.

All the way to Je-
rusalem Jerusalem , rocks—rocks
—rocks. Roads in-
fernal infernal . Thought we
never would get there.

Arrived at last
on a hill north of the
city & overlooking

Jerusalem.

Loaf Bits of ruin scat-
tered scattered everywhere, & the
ground thick with Mo-
saics Mosaics .

Could recognize
the Tower

Tower of Hippicus

“ 　 “ 　 Antonio

[MS: N9_leaf_061r]

Mosque of Omar

Damascus Gate

Mount Olivet

Valley of Jehoshaphat

Garden of Gethsemane

Mount Moriah

& could see where
many other localities
belonged.

Loafed all the
afternoon in the Med-
iterranean Mediterranean Hotel.

We entered by the
Jaff Damascus
Gate, part of which
is very old & part
was repaired by the
Crusaders.

Sept. 23.—Visited
the Mosque of Omar—
immense area—
that part of it occupied
[MS: N9_leaf_061v] by Omar is paved with
flags & has pillared
gates (4.)

Little Temple where
David & some other party
(Goliah) used to sit
& judge the people.

Mosaic windows
(ancient)

Place where

Footprint of ( Abra-
haim Abrahaim , I suppose, when
he was going to sacri-
fice sacrifice Isaac.

Great Rock of
Abraham’s Sacrifice
(authentic)

Cords of pillars
& sculptures from Sol-
omon Solomon ’s Temple ( authen-
tic authentic )
[MTP: N&J1_433] —peculiar forms.

[MS: N9_leaf_062r]

Grip of the Angel
Gabriel on the big rock.

Got some pieces
of the old Temple.

Down

Buckler of Ma-
homet Mahomet ’s uncle

Place where they
tie rags to let Ma-
homet Mahomet know they have
been there.

Down below is
place where Mahomet
shoved Rock up with
his head.

The Rock is sus-
pended suspended between Heaven
& Earth.

Hole in middle
which leads down to
Mahommedan Hell
—Men Souls stand there &
Mahomet lifts them
[MS: N9_leaf_062v] up by hair of head—
so they leave a scalp-
lock—lose it, go to
hell sure.

Legend of the old
tale-bearing woman.

Mosque El Aksa.

Tombs Aaron’s 2
sons. Formerly Cru-
sader Crusader Church (they took
city 10199, & held it 300 yrs)

Stairways cedar Leb.

Pillars (squeeze.)

Walls full of rel-
ics relics of Solomon’s
Temple plastered in
for preservation—
Christians would steal
& take home. Thank
the Mohammedans.

Beautiful old inverted
pillars.

[MS: N9_leaf_063r]
[MTP: N&J1_434]

Underneath are the
old monstrous arched
pillars & foundations
of Solomon’s Temple,
preserved excellently
by the ruins that lay
upon them so long.

Also the double
gate where the first
fruits came in for
the priests.

And the subter-
ranean subterranean way to the
Pool of Siloam
discovered by Dr
Robinson.

Crypts under temple
40 ft high arches—
olive trees & pavements
of great age above

No hogs in Palestine

[MS: N9_leaf_063v]

Palace of Caiaphas

Pool of Bethesda.
The Gate Beautiful
and
Seat of Judgment

(pillar sticking out)
where Mahomet will judge
the world. Both over-
look overlook valley of Jehosha-
phat Jehoshaphat , Tomb of St James,
(apostle,) tomb of Absa-
lom Absalom & that of a High
Priest.

Doorway of Pilate’s
House.

Place where Christ
sat when people said
His blood be upon us
& upon our children.

Place near Tower
Antonio where he took
up his cross.

Via Sacra. Dolorosa.

3d place where he
[MS: N9_leaf_064r] fell with X cr & broke
a great pillar.

4th place—where
he left mark of el-
bow elbow in wall.

Dives house

Lazarus House

Hous of Dog Moreover

[MTP: N&J1_435]

Tombs of the Kings.

Quarries under the City.

Calvary.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Organ & chanting of the
Monks.

Repairing of the Dome.

Dim cathedral light
of many smoking tapers.

[MS: N9_leaf_064v]

Maximilians gift.

Place where Helena
found the Cross—& her
chapel & where she sat.

Pillar of Flagellation.

Stocks.

Place where soldier
was beheaded who said
Truly this was the Son
of God.

Place where John
& Mary stood looking
at Christ on the X when
he said Woman, behold
thy Son—Behold thy
Mother.

Place where Jesus
appeared to Mary in the
Garden.

Place where the
women came at early
dawn & saw the an-
gels angels at the Sepulchre.

The rent rock & the
[MS: N9_leaf_065r] holes where the 3 crosses
stood.

Navel of the world
in the Greek Chapel, where
Adam’s dust came from.

Russian gift to the
Cross.

Sword & spurs of
Godfrey of Bulloigne,
first King of Jerusalem
(genuine) worn by Patri-
arch Patriarch of Greek Church
at Installation.

Crown of thorns.

[MTP: N&J1_436]

Sept. 24—Left Jeru-
salem Jerusalem at 8 AM. Passed
out at St Stephen’s Gate
along base of Olivet
in Jehoshaphat by
Jew Graveyard &
tomb of Absalom—
Jews throw stones at
it to this day.

[MS: N9_leaf_065v]

Hill of Offense over
beyond village o & Pool
of Siloam.

Job’s well.

Brook & Valley
of Kedron.

Village of Bethany.

It is fearfully ratty—some
houses—mud—6 feet
square & others holes
in the ground—all
windowless.

House & tomb of
Lazarus & his 2
sisters.

Lunched.

Over mountain
& saw Jordan Valley,
Mountains of Moa
Moab & Dead Sea

[MS: N9_leaf_066r]

Modern 2d Jericho.

8 Arched aqueduct—old
walls, & river bed full
of verdure.

Fountain of Elisha
where ravens fed him
Elijah & where he as-
cended ascended in fiery chariot
& his robe fell upon
Elisha, who healed these
waters. Where Gilgal
stood—where the 12
stones taken from
Jordan were placed—
where Christ was
baptised (?) where Des-
ert Desert wandres first touched
Caanan—where they
set up the ark & ate of
the old corn & ceased from
manna & quails—
where they long remained.

[MS: N9_leaf_066v]

Ancient Jericho.

Where Joshua marched
around 7 times & blew
down the walls.
[MTP: N&J1_437] Many ruins still there (arches,
of course), & mosaics in
the brook. Precipice
perforated with holes.

Cam This is the
Plain of Jericho, noted
as the most fertile spot
in Palestine—they
used to I irrigate it.

Apples of Sodom.

Campd near the
old Square Tower ( Mid-
dle Middle Ages no doubt)—
garris & Modern (mud)
Jericho.—garrisoned
by 15 men—Bedouin
war.

[MS: N9_leaf_067r]

Sc Priest only entered
Holy of Holies once a
year & then sent scape
goat through Golden Gate
to wilderness (some beat
gobbled him up, sins &
all, before he got 100
yds.

Prodigal Son bet
on King & Jack & cop-
pered coppered the ace & busted
This man is a beat.

—Father killed
fatted calf— equiva-
lent equivalent to champagne
blow out.

Lazarus had a
good deal of property.

Lizards all emi-
grating emigrating .

Waltz back in the
wilderness.

[MS: N9_leaf_067v]

Jordan’s a hard road
to travel.

Gitting a King (&
bones) from Tomb of the
Kings.

Modern Jerusalem
compared with the New
Jerusalem of Revela-
tions Revelations —last first.

Our shiek guards.

Scared parties to Jordan.

[MTP: N&J1_438]

God protect the relics of
Jerusalem when our
tribe get there.

Burial of Moses.

Destruction of Sennacherib

[MS: N9_leaf_068r]

Tried to take part of the
hole.

Jack at Dead Sea
wanted to know if that was
why they called it asphal-
tum asphaltum ?

No Second Advent
—Christ been here once—
will never come again.

I have only one pleas-
ant pleasant reminiscence of this
Palestine excursion—time
I was sick had the cholera in Damascus.

Astonishing honesty
of Europe—old drov-
ers drovers chasing me over
Switzerland—Jack’s
watch & opera glass—
Mrs Larrowe’s sack—Leary
letter of credit.

[MS: N9_leaf_068v]

Dead Sea.

Sept. 25—Visited
ancient Jericho & the
Fountain of Jer Elisha.
Found mosaics in the pool.

Abraham had a row
with the Arabs about pitching
the tents in a hot valley a-
mong among the fig trees.

As usual, got up 2
hours too soon (at 2 AM)
& at 4 had traversed the
plain of Jericho & arrived
at the

River Jordan,

—the ford, where the 12 stones
were taken out.

Lay down in the bushes
& slept 2 hours & caught
cold. Got up & crossed
the Jordan.

Then rode 2 hours
to the d Dead Sea, & took
a long bath. Face
[MS: N9_leaf_069r] blistered & hair filled
with crystalized salt.—
Took a horse in & he
upset.

[MTP: N&J1_439]

After providing
so many shieks & guides,
never saw a Bedouin—
one guard wanted to smouch
me.

Rode 5½ hours through
frightful heat, over the roughest
mountain scenery, and
arrived at last, brimming
with gratitude, at the pro-
digious prodigious Convent of Mar
Saber, in a wild glen on
the brook Kedron.

Staid all night.

That bombardment.

Bethlehem.

Sept. 26—Got up at
3 AM & traveled 2½ hours
over mountains at got to
[MS: N9_leaf_069v]

Annunciation

the enclosure of olive in a plain
trees trees in a plain where the angels an-
nounced announced the birth of the
Saviour to the Shepherds.

Then ¼ hour to Beth-
lehem Bethlehem & to the

Milk Grotto.

Then to the convent
of the Nativity—built by
St Helena in 326.

The birth-place.

The Manger.

Prophet Zechariah.

St Jerome.

Joseph’s retiring-
grotto during the confine-
ment confinement .

Place where 20,000
children beheaded by
Herod were buried.

St Eusebius.

Lunched there &
left.—2 hours to Je-
[MS: N9_leaf_070r] rusalem. On the way,
visited Rachel’s Tomb
(authentic.)

In Jerusalem break-
fasted breakfasted at noon at the Med-
iterranean Mediterranean Hotel, & then
went to the Hill of Offense,
where Solomon built
a temple for his Egyptian
wife. Tree there that
Judas Iscariot hanged
himself on.

Went to the Jews’
wailing place along-
side alongside the old wall of
Solomon’s Temple
—cyclopian masonry.
Many Pharisees, with
a curl forward of
ear.

Another part of
Temple wall, where
Dr Robinson discovered
[MS: N9_leaf_070v] the spring of the arch
which Solomon built
to connect Zion Hill
with the Temple. The
prophecy that 2 stones
should not remain upon
each other not strictly
fulfilled. 3 or 4 of these
stones are 20 feet
[MTP: N&J1_440] long
& 5 or 6 thick. How
did they haul them with
camels & jacks.

Retired to our
tents outside the Da-
mascus Damascus Gate.

Rough on the
RAVENS—

could hardly make their
own living, let alone
board Elijah.

[MS: N9_leaf_071r]

Jerusalem.

Sept 27.—Left
camp, outside the city walls,
between the Damascus &
Jaffa gates (in head of Hin-
nom Hinnom Valley, which carries
the waters of Gihon)—&
passed Jaffa gate (on west
of the city) & crossed Hin-
nom Hinnom Valley between upper
& Lower Gihon Pools, where
an aqueduct built by Solo-
mon Solomon crosses. Then went
South & climbed the Hill of
Evil Council & stood on
the house of Caiaphas,
where Judas the priests
conspired against
Christ & where Judas
went to receive his 30
pieces of silver—
& sat under the tree
whereon he hanged
himself. To the South
[MS: N9_leaf_071v] was the Plain of Epraim
& the Hill. In front was
Zion Hill, Zion Gate, the
Dung Gate, Davids Tower,
David’s Tomb, & the Tower
of Hippicus by the Jaffa
Gate,. On the left (west,
were the Mountains of Judah
& on the right, beyond
the Valley of Jehoshaphat
were the Hills of Benja-
min Benjamin . Over the Mosque
of Omar was the Hill
where Titus camped, &
furthermost to the left
was Scopus. Where
Hinnom joins Jehosh-
aphat Jehoshaphat was the Village
of Siloam at the foot
of the Hill of Offense.

Went down into
Hinnom & all along
its high ledge rocks,
saw gouged altars of
[MS: N9_leaf_072r] Moloch, some with in-
scriptions inscriptions . Much of the
foot is the Field of Blood,
Potter’s Field, or Aceldama,
purchased by the Priests
with Judas’s money. More
altars & more & some tombs,
all the way down oppo-
site opposite Zion.

Saw where the altar
of Moloch stood (& his im-
age image ,) where they used to sac-
rifice sacrifice the children.

Debouched into the
Valley of Jehoshaphat (brook
Kedron,) & drank at Job’s
well (near Sultana’s) which is
8 × 15 × 100—men in water
with feet, loading mules. It
is older than Joshua—say
nearly
[MTP: N&J1_441] 4,000 years—is simply
called En Rogel or Job’s be-
cause because he had a garden
there.

[MS: N9_leaf_072v]

Turned up to left
into Tyrophean or Cheese-
monger’s Valley, which used
to run up th to the Damas-
cus Damascus gate & divide the city,
leaving Ophel & Mount
Moriah in Benjamin,
& Zion in Judah.

In foot of Tyrophean
saw large tree under which
Zecharias was killed. 50
yards feet above, it, Lower
Pool of Siloam—right
above it the Main Pool of
Siloam, trench 30 ft, & little
spring woman drawing water— dug down into the
solid rock. Robinson traced
its tunnel to that of the
Virgin. Out

Out & to left & turned
up Jehosh, along under
lee of Ophel, (seeing point
of Moriah, with Temple
wall high up above & be-
[MS: N9_leaf_073r] fore us, St Stephen’s gate,
the Golden Gate outside &
the Gate Beautiful as a
vestibule within, & the pillar
projecting which Ma-
homet Mahomet is to straddle &
judge the world.

The King’s Gardens
all along—& the King’s
well. Passed by the cu-
rious curious old Village of Si-
loam Siloam , with some of its
dens carved out of the
rock, & came first to
the Tomb of Zecharias,
(carr then to St James &
then to Absalom & Jehosh-
aphats Jehoshaphats Tombs—all in a
row & all cut out of the
solid rock—Jews through
throw stones at Ab’s yet
because he drove out his
father—pile there. Passed
Jew cemetery.—

[MS: N9_leaf_073v]

Turn Tur Virgin Mary’s Fountain.

Proceeded to the Gar-
den Garden of Gethsemane, with
its Garden & of Flowers & 8
hoary Olive trees.

Outside saw little lane
where Judas betrayed, & just
above, the rock on which
disciples slept.

Turned up to left,
past St Agnes & Virgin
Mary’s Tombs, & ascended
to top of Mount of Olives.
By Convent road which
Jose David ascended when
Absalom drove him out
& member of hous of Saul
threw stones after him.
By Convent where Catho-
lics Catholics say Jesus ascended
to Heaven.

[MTP: N&J1_442]

To the southeast saw
another hill between Olivet
& Bethany where Bible
says he ascended—
[MS: N9_leaf_074r] To the east & southeast
saw plainly the Jordan, its
valley, the Dead Sea & the
Mountains of Moab. To
the south saw the Frank
Mountain & near it the
desert where Christ was
tempted of the devil—&
the rather toward the S.W.
the Plain of Ephraim, the
Hill of Offense & toward Beth-
lehem Bethlehem . On the west, Je-
rusalem Jerusalem & beyond, the
Mountains of Judah.
On the north the hill where
Titus pitched his camp, &
beyond, Scopus. In the
distance, Nebo-Samuel.

Crossed the Valley of
Jehoshaphat, & whn abreast
of the Damascus gate (north),
came to the noblest stateliest tree in
Palestine—Godfrey de Bulloigne’s
tree where he camped.

[MS: N9_leaf_074v]

Mahomedan’s believe
that when the Golden
gate is unwalled &
opened, they pass out
of power forever—
both themselves, the
Jews & Christians
are expecting it now.

Went through
the Via Dolorosa.

Sept. 28—Went all through
the Holy Sepulchre again.

Saw the rock faces in a
wall on Via Dolorosa that
cried Hosanna! when Jesus
passed.

Visited the Fountain of
Hezekiah, where SDavid
saw the mother of Solomon
bathing.

Went to the Pool of
[MS: N9_leaf_075r] Bethesda again for water.

Got a branch from the
Cedar of Lebanon planted
by Godfrey de Bouillon,
first King of Jerusalem
about 1085 to 1099.

[MTP: N&J1_443]

28 or 29

Went out by the
Damascus Gate 3 PM & left
for Ramleh—reached
there at 8 PM. or 9. Tall,
handsome Crusader’s tower.
This is the valley of Ajalon,
where the moon stood still.

Next morning—Sep.
30—rode 3 hours in a
gallop to Joppa—where
timber for Solomon’s
temple was landed

Jonah sailed from
here on his mission.

Visited house of
Simon the Tanner
where the Peter had
[MS: N9_leaf_075v] the vision of unclean
beasts.

Napoleon took
this place once.

Oct. 1.—Sailed
for Egypt.

Oct 3—Landed at
Alexandria.

Cafe d’Europe

Hotel d’Europe—
Ptr-per-Pce Wales.

Catacombs—pass
along another King.

Pompey’s pillar.

Cleopatra’s Needles.

Great Cemetery.

Mahmoudeea Canal

Nile boats.

Fine streets & dwellings.

Fine shade-tree avenues.

Luxurious bowers

[MS: N9_leaf_076r]
[MTP: N&J1_444]

Great fountain in
main street.

Heliopolis.

Oct. 4—To Cairo
by rail—7 hours,— ar-
rived arrived after night.

Oct. 5—Donkeys
to Pyramids of Ghizeh
—past old Cairo, island
of Rhodah.

Nilometer

Moses in Bulrushes.

Crossed the Nile from
Old Cairo to Ghizeh

Splendid atmosphere

Beautiful Oriental
scenery.

Naked girls in the
streets.—finely built.

Noble shaded avenue
leading to Old Cairo.

Ascent of Pyramid
of Cheops

[MS: N9_leaf_076v]

The Sphynx

Went into the Pyramid

The Shiek

Newly opened tomb
behind the Sphynx.

Theatre of red granite
opened near it.

The whole place
round about is rich
in art—under the sand.

Dr. Gibson at the
Sphynx.

Return to Cairo.

Mosque of Mehemet
Ali—Oriental alabaster

Joseph’s Well.

Citadel, & lofty wall,
where the last Mameluke
Bey jumped down.

[MTP: N&J1_445]

The birds in the Mosque.

View of Cairo &
Memphis.

[MS: N9_leaf_077r]

Heliopolis & the
Petrified forest.

The City of the
Caliphs.

300,000 pop.

Projecting lattices

Runners before
carriages.

Shepheard’s infa-
mous infamous hotel

Bucksheesh.

The Museum.

Said Pasha’s Palace
—shabby furniture

Splendid avenue
[MS: N9_leaf_077v] of sycamores &
acacias 3 or 4
miles, to

The Pasha’s great
garden.

Passed Red Sea
Ship canal.

Expedition to Suez
& the Red Sea.

[MTP: N&J1_446]

Abasynnian ex-
pedition expedition getting ready
for the rescue of the
prisoners.

Shiek on a ca dro-
medary dromedary .

[MS: N9_leaf_078r]

Oct. 7—Returnd
to Alexandria—

Pyramids in the
distance.

Cultivation—vast
oceans of corn, &c

Queer villages.

Soft scenery.

Oct. 7—Left Dan
& Vail & sailed for
Africa.

Oct. 11—At
sea, somewhere in
the neighborhood of
Malta. Very stormy.

Terrible death—to
be talked to death.

[MS: N9_leaf_078v]
[MTP: N&J1_447]

The storm has
blown two small
land birds & a hawk
to sea & they came
on board.

Sea full of fly-
ing flying fish.

sequence 2

Clemens inscribed the remaining pages of the notebook from the back cover; the text that follows begins with a new sequence of pages beginning with the outside back cover

[MS: N9_outside back cover]

Stromboli—Sicily—Sylla
—Charybdis—Greece—the Hellespont—Constantinople—
Black Sea—Sebastopol &
Odessa,—Smyrna— Bei-
rut Beirut —Holy Land—back to
Jaffa—thence to Egypt.

260 　 Purser Wedding.

Far-away Moses.

Moonlight heal the scars

[MS: N9_inside back cover]
[MTP: N&J1_448]

Dr. Gibson	Dan Slote
Capt Duncan	Haldeman,
Mr. Crocker	Jack Van N.
Mrs. ditto	Moulton
Harry & George	Church,
Mo. S. Beach.	Denny,
Chas Dimon	Birch
Lockwood.
Dr Crane & son
Dr Andrews
Greer
Cutter Bloodgood H.
Dr Brown
Foster
Hice

written upside down at the bottom of the page

Lizards emigrating—ants.

[MS: N9_back flyleaf recto]

5 canes
1 portfolio
1 toothbrush &c.
2 boxes.

Maybe ve coom Moon-
day Moonday .

[MTP: N&J1_449]

45 at Goodenough’s
before was up. breakfast.

Hospital ship—cripples.

“Examining committee.”

“No use my eating—go out & puke
it overboard.”—J. W.

written upside down directly below the previous paragraph

Christ been once—never come again.

[MS: N9_back flyleaf verso]

✗ Simon the tinner

✗ Mephistophiles—Themistocles

✗ Sylla & Carybdis.

✗ Woollen shirt

✗ Latrina.

✗ MG—tried borrow shirt of
Goodenough to get likeness taken
in.

Dr. B’s manner of eating.

Fos going round table talking
loudly.

[MTP: N&J1_450]

Hats on in palace.

No bucksheesh at pal.

D. & L.’s water skins.

“Synagogue.”

If a lunatic want to be a dan-
gerous dangerous one.

✗ Vermilion—chameleon.

The poet—

Oracle’s spy-glass

Iconoclast—Gibn

[MTP: N&J1_451]

Old Roman ruins cropping out there.

[MS: N9_leaf_01r]

Egypt & Palestine.

Bre Coffee at 7 AM—breakfast
at 12—dinner at 6. Bad
arrangement.

The idea of the Children
of Israel leaving Egypt to
hunt up a better thing in
Palestine is rich.

Hotel d’Europe—“P. Wales.”

Ants carry grub 11 miles.

Bible topography

Shabby Shepherd’s Hotel.

Rice, corn, &cotton, &c

Date palms—fine.

River ¼ to ⅓ m wide.

Cemetery—forest dates.

Grand avenue of syc. & acacia

250,000 inhab.

Mosque Mehemet Ali

Mud Villages

Sunset

European look of Alexn

Lanterns

Howling dervishes

Mountebank—juggler.

[MS: N9_leaf_01v]

Millions for defense, but
not a cent for bucksheesh.

[MTP: N&J1_452]

Pass along another
King—these plebs won’t burn.

Sell all ancestors £300

Tomb of the Virgin would
draw in New York.

eight blank pages follow

sequence 3

a new sequence of two pages begins below, dated August 14 (see leaf 006r in sequence 1 at the beginning of this notebook); they are followed by a third page with a drawing

[MS: N9_leaf_06r]
[MTP: N&J1_386]

a brace appears to the right of the two lines below

On Board Steamer

Quaker City, Aug 14.

Capt C C Duncan

Sir—Whereas—

First—There is noth-
ing nothing to see at Sebastopol
but a bare &
[MTP: N&J1_387] uninterest-
ing uninteresting battle-field where mili-
tary military fortifications have
been but no longer ex-
ist exist —and

Secondly—Several
among us haveing stood
am in the midst of such
scenes of this character
of infinitely greater im-
portance importance in our own
Country in the smoke
& carnage of battle—
and—

Thirdly—The remain-
der remainder of our company
[MS: N9_leaf_06v] having seen a sufficiency
of such things after the
battles were over—and

Fourthly—Since
by leaving Sebastopol
out of the excursion we
can gain a precious
addition of time for
travel in Palestine,
—

Therefore, Satisfied
that the minority if a short
trip be taken through
the Bosphorus & into
the Black Sea, all par-
ties parties will be willing
to forego the extension
of it to desolate Sebas-
topol Sebastopol with its notable
pyr pile of porter
bottles, we respectfully
request that you will
alter your programme
in accordance with the sug-
gestion suggestion contained in this last
paragraph.

Respectfully

[MS: N9_leaf_07r]

pointing to the left side of ‘Bema’ in drawing below:
Where the public meetings
were held in the open air.

pointing to the right side of ‘Bema’ in drawing below:
Where Demosthenes stirred
up the Athenians to con-
tinue continue the war against
Philip of Macedon.

drawing, labeled:
Hymettus
Mars Hill
Acropolis
Parthenon
Areopagus
where Paul
preached
Athens
Bema
The Piraeus
Tomb of Themistocles

thirteen blank pages follow before the last page of sequence 1

Editorial Notes

The entry appears lengthwise on the front endpaper; it was apparently written when Clemens was visiting Palestine in September.

By Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander. The poem has been neatly transcribed on the first four notebook pages and may have been set down from memory. Paine testified that Clemens “often repeated” his favorite stanzas in the Nevada days, and that the poem became “to him a sort of literary touchstone” ( MTB , p. 217). Clemens entered the title in this notebook, and he quoted part of the first stanza in his September 12 Alta letter.

The Quaker City arrived in Naples August 1. On August 7 a correspondent to the London Times reported that most of the passengers had “landed at Civita Vecchia, and many of them have come on by land. . . . In all there are 65 passengers, 80 having been expected, who will remain not more than 12 days, of which seven have been spent either in quarantine or in escaping from it viâ Civita Vecchia and Rome” (15 August 1867). Mrs. Severance noted that their departure was actually delayed until eight o’clock in the morning because Jacob S. Haldeman (“unfortunately a victim of intemperance”) was late returning from shore. “After a man had been dispatched for him, he came rowing out rapidly in a boat with four oars, as he had seen the steamer moving round and had feared they had left him” ( JLS , p. 106).

Apparently because his Alta letter for this period was lost in the mails, Clemens returned to his notebook when writing about Stromboli for The Innocents Abroad. This passage was inserted, with minor changes, in the second paragraph of chapter 32.

The entries from here through “Chris Colombo” are evidently Clemens’ recollections of his visit to Rome, which preceded the departure from Naples.

Clemens’ letter to the Alta from Rome was lost. In writing about “Old Monkish Frauds” for The Innocents Abroad he may have referred to these notes on Saint Peter: “we also stood in the Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers, and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order that he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter’s face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that by falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at the church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great footprints in it and said that Peter’s feet made those, we lacked confidence again” (chapter 26).

Margaux, in southern France, the source of Château Margaux wine, is also in the vicinity of several sea-bathing resorts. Clemens did not stay in or pass through this area, and it is not known what sort of bath he meant.

Clemens probably refers to a fifteen-foot bronze statue of Hercules that had been excavated at the site of the theater of Pompey in 1864. According to A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs, 10th ed. (London: John Murray, 1871), Pope Pius IX purchased the statue for the equivalent of $50,000. Clemens explained in chapter 28 of The Innocents Abroad that its seller had just bought his farm “for thirty-six thousand dollars, so the first crop was a good one for the new farmer.”

Clemens fully expressed his opinion of the two monarchs, whom he had seen together in Paris, in chapter 13 of The Innocents Abroad.

Clemens apparently witnessed the grisly daily burial procedure at Campo Santo Vecchio. An American reporter, Frank Hall, had viewed the scene earlier that year and reported: “The dead for the day were brought to the pit’s side, the priest who attends daily was there, the coffins were opened, that the priest and the custodian of the ground might see their contents. There was no need to be told that they were children of the poor—for among all there was not an adult corpse—their pinched, grinning faces and their dirty, tattered garments told all that and more. The priest murmured a short prayer, sprinkled each coffin with holy water, and then the sextons did their duty by taking their little bodies one by one and dropping them into the vault, where they fell with a crunching sound on the dead bones beneath. The last box was opened—can I ever forget the sight?—twelve infants packed in one box, and the sexton took them out one by one by the heel dropping them into the yawning pit as if they had been so many dead kittens” (letter written on 2 May 1867, Elmira N.Y. Advertiser, n.d.; clipping in MTP).

“As we enter the harbour, a sarcophagus, hollowed out of the rock at the water’s edge, is seen, near which lie the fragments of a large column. This is called the monument of Themistocles,—most appropriately situated in sight of the scene of his great victory on the one hand, and the city he saved on the other” (Thomas Chase, Hellas: Her Monuments and Scenery Cambridge, Mass.: Sever and Francis, 1863, p. 13). Clemens interlined this entry above “these countries” some time after completing the general description of Athens. He mentions the tomb again on leaf 016r

A Handbook for Travellers in Greece, new ed. (London: John Murray, 1854) remarked that “detention in a Lazzaretto has been defined as ‘imprisonment, with the chance of catching the plague;’ and its length and frequency formed, until within the last few years, a serious drawback to the pleasures of an Eastern tour. . . . The duration of quarantine sometimes amounted of old to the full probation of 40 days, from which the term is derived; and it rarely was less than 10 days, even when the vessel arrived with a clean bill of health” (p. 13). Recalling an incident of 1854 in which British seamen broke quarantine and, as a result, ten thousand people died, Mrs. Severance remarked that “one is not surprised to see the stringency maintained” ( JLS , p. 113).

Years later William A. Pratt, quartermaster of the Quaker City, recalled that he “was told by the ship’s captain, that aft some gentlemen wanted to go ashore after dark, but he said, ‘Remember I don’t give you any liberty to take that small boat.’ Mr. Pratt understood what that meant. . . . These four men said they would take the chances if he would land them on a rocky point of land away from the Old Port and keep a lookout for their return. . . . Mr. Pratt says he did not sleep much that night, as he kept a constant watch for a peculiar whistle which he heard when the first call was made, but it was a close shave to avoid the quarantine boat, which was on the lookout for anyone who would dare to violate their law” (undated, unidentified newspaper clipping in MTP).

Clemens took one of these relics as a souvenir of his hike to the Acropolis. The small marble head is now in the Mark Twain Papers.

Moses S. Beach and the Reverend Henry Bullard also managed to run the blockade successfully. As Mark Twain reported in chapter 32 of The Innocents Abroad, “They slipped away so quietly that they were not missed from the ship for several hours. They had the hardihood to march into the Piræus in the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some danger of adding two or three months’ imprisonment to the other novelties of their Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. . . . But they went and came safely, and never walked a step.”

Clemens gave a similar list in his Alta letter for 15 August and said that he “wished that the illustrious men who had sat in the Parthenon in the remote ages could visit it again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes” ( TIA , p. 106).

Clemens added this sentence, referring (in the plural) to the Doric columns of the Propylaea, at a later time.

This was the statue of Athena Polias which stood in one of the shrines of the Erechtheum.

The Quaker City entered the Hellespont at noon on August 16, according to Captain Duncan’s log.

Short for Dardanelles. Ships were required to stop here and present their papers before proceeding to Constantinople.

“At 430 Vice Roy of Egypt passed in his Yacht Steamer beating us at least 2 Miles an hour” (CCD, 16 August 1867). “This yacht is of a splendid model, is the fastest vessel afloat, and was built at a cost which would shake the very bones of the chief of the Rothschilds” (James Eglinton Montgomery, Our Admiral’s Flag Abroad New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1869, p. 384).

The Serasker Tower stands in the plaza of the Seraskerat, or War Office. “From this point all parts of Constantinople, Pera, Galata, Scutari, the Golden Horn and its extension to the Sweet Waters, the Bosphorus, with its harbor and shipping, and all the natural and artificial beauty of its incomparable shores, the sea of Marmora with its islands, and the vast chain of mountains bounding the view in the distance, are all spread out before us as upon a map. Looking down upon the city itself, one can trace amid the vast sea of red tile-roofs the form and position of the bazars, the palaces, the colleges and public buildings” (Dr. Abraham R. Jackson, 19 August 1867 letter to the Monroe County Pa. Democrat). Clemens’ drawing is of this view.

Dr. Abraham R. Jackson described this monument for his readers in the Monroe County (Pa.) Democrat as “the lofty square pillar of Constantine, built of blocks of marble and formerly covered by plates of brass. Many of the stones are displaced, and the upper portion of the structure threatens to fall” (letter dated 19 August 1867).

This monument was “formed of three bronze serpents, the tails downwards, and the bodies twisted spirally as far as the necks; their heads spreading outward formerly supported the golden tripod of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, whence this singular monument is generally supposed to have been brought” (Handbook for Travellers in Constantinople, Brûsa, and the Troad London: John Murray, 1893, p. 41).

Probably the “Galata Tower . . . which is one of the most striking features in Galata, and is now used as a fire-station. . . . From the Galata Tower travellers obtain the best general view of the city, and it should be one of the first places visited” (Murray’s Constantinople, p. 16).

The Cistern of Philoxenus in Constantinople was known for the striking effect made by its 1,001 supporting columns.

The “Museum of Ancient Costumes, or of the Janissaries . . . contains a collection of old Turkish costumes on lay figures, which was formed by Sultan Abdul Mejid, and at one time kept in the Seraglio. . . . In no other place can the visitor obtain such a vivid impression of that strange old Turkish life which passed away for ever when Mahmûd II. introduced his reforms” (Murray’s Constantinople, p. 70).

“I never saw such utterly wretched, starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in all my life. . . . They are the sorriest beasts that breathe—the most abject—the most pitiful. In their faces is a settled expression of melancholy, an air of hopeless despondency” ( TIA , pp. 123–124).

“ ‘This boy is worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred—for behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath dealings with him, and from the waters of Marmora to the Euxine there abideth not so gifted a liar!’ How is that, for a recommendation? The Missionaries tell me that you hear encomiums like that passed upon people every day” ( TIA , pp. 121–122).

Probably this is a reference to Jacob S. Haldeman’s acquisitions from the Bazaar: hastily painted pictures, and old, jewel-handled guns or swords—both commonly sold in Constantinople.

Dr. Jackson reported seeing “a train of men bearing water enclosed in pig-skins upon their backs. Pig-skins, used in this way are not ornamental. They always present the appearance of very bloated pigs with their heads and legs cut off; and no pig can appear gracefully when seen dangling upside down hanging by his own tail” (19 August 1867 letter to the Monroe County Pa. Democrat).

As Clemens wrote to the Alta from Constantinople late in August, “I never want another one. The cooking apparatus was in the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the street. The cook was dirty, and so was the table. . . . That is all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt, but it has its weak points” ( TIA , pp. 127–128). Clemens claimed that he and his comrades were too intimidated by the poor fare and its unsanitary preparation to partake, but Captain Duncan remarked, apparently of a visit to a similar establishment: “We . . . ransacked the kitchen and found half a Chicken—Some Stewed beef—ditto Mutton and Some eggs ordered the Whole Stock and Sat down—Made a comfortable lunch” (CCD, 17 August 1867).

On 23 August Clemens wrote to the Alta from Constantinople: “If you want dwarfs—I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity—go to Genoa. If you want to buy them by the gross, for retail, go to Milan. There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that in Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style of assorted cripples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States. But if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human monsters, both, go straight to Constantinople” ( TIA , p. 115).

This sentence was added at a later but undetermined time. Finding no room after the preceding entry (to which it is obviously related) Clemens entered it in the left margin of the preceding notebook page beside “Porters . . . Costumes.”

Following the establishment of the Church Missionary Society of Great Britain in Smyrna (1832), Turkish law had assigned the death penalty to any Moslem converting to another religion.

The principal cause for American unpopularity in Turkey is discussed in note 61.

As late as 1895 an American authority on Constantinople regretted that “the United States possess no fixed habitation for their representative to the Sublime Porte. . . . Now the American Legation is so subject to spring and autumn removal from place to place that its appropriate emblem is a carpet-bag rather than an eagle” (Edwin A. Grosvenor, Constantinople, 2 vols. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895, 1:106–107).

The Beylerbey Serai was built by Sultan Abdul-Aziz in 1865. In 1895 Grosvenor wrote, “this remains, the fairest architectural achievement of his reign and the most beautiful structure on the Bosphorus. It is a pile of the purest, snowiest marble. No other Ottoman edifice so combines what is most exquisite in Eastern and Western architecture and art” (Grosvenor, Constantinople, 1:234–236).

In addition to Dan Slote and Jack Van Nostrand, six other passengers remained in Constantinople: J. Heron Foster, Jacob S. Haldeman, Moses S. Beach, Emeline Beach, Solon Severance, and the Reverend Henry Bullard.

Richard F. Burton noted in his translation of “The Arabian Nights” that an Arabic word for “beardless and handsome” was often “used in a bad sense, to denote an effeminate, a catamite.” And in his concluding essay he alluded to “the ‘unspeakable Turk,’ a race of born pederasts” (The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 10 vols. Benares: Kamashastra Society, 1885, 1:327; 10:232).

Clemens informed his Alta readers that when first trying a water pipe the neophyte “smokes at every pore, like a frame house that is on fire on the inside, and after that he lays down his hose and goes home sicker than ever he was before in all his life” ( TIA , p. 123).

Clemens wrote the New York Tribune on 31 August that “the books of travel have shamefully deceived me all these years” about “the narghili, the dervishes, the aromatic coffee, the Turkish bath—these are the things I have accepted and believed in, with simple, unquestioning faith, from boyhood; and, behold, they are the poorest, sickest, wretchedest humbugs the world can furnish. Wonders, forsooth!” ( TIA , p. 132).

The passengers spent August 21 touring the ruins of the siege and bombardment of 1854–1855 and sailed at nine o’clock that evening for Odessa. Daniel Leary explained to his brother on August 29 that “our time at Sevastopol was two days, but we saw everything in one, and the other day was given over to going to Odessa” (Lewis Leary, “More Letters from the Quaker City,” American Literature 42 May 1970: 201).

The passengers’ “certain reasons” for declining a visit to the emperor, as well as Daniel Leary’s personal motives in seeking an audience, are discussed in the headnote.

Clemens’ entry does not square precisely with Captain Duncan’s account. Evidently, the Quaker City set sail for Yalta on August 24 at 11:00 A.M. without any positive assurance that the emperor would receive them and “trusting to luck for permission to enter” the harbor (CCD, 24 August 1867). By August 25 they were at Yalta, but it was not until Daniel Leary, Captain Duncan, and United States consul Smith (from Odessa) approached the governor-general of Yalta that plans for the audience with the czar were established firmly. “At 5 we were . . . informed that the Emperor would receive us all in the Palace Grounds the next day at Noon” (CCD, 25 August 1867).

Clemens grew increasingly self-conscious about his address to the czar. At first he felt sufficiently pleased with it to send his family “the original draught . . .to be put into alcohol and preserved forever like a curious reptile” (SLC to “Dear Folks,” 25 August 1867, MTL , p. 133). The version in the notebook is obviously a fair copy of that draft. The text of the address, as it was read by Consul Smith to the czar, is substantially this one—which was also printed in the Alta, the Sun, the Tribune, and copied by the London Times (12 September 1867), Littell’s Living Age (5 October 1867), and many other periodicals. Before the address was to be printed as a broadside on the Quaker City press, however, Clemens further revised and simplified the language: “the words we speak here, & the sentiments wherewith they are freighted” became “the words we speak and the sentiments we utter,” for example. Further doubts about the speech led him to omit the text from The Innocents Abroad. There he merely imagined the emperor ordering the speech “filed away among the archives of Russia—in the stove,” and he represented the crew of the Quaker City mocking “the phraseology of that tiresome address. . . . I never was so tired of any one phrase as the sailors made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Emperor of Russia” (chapters 37 and 38).

As of August 25 Clemens had written only two letters to the New York Tribune, even though he had agreed to write that paper at least “two letters a month” ( MTLBowen , pp. 15–16). On September 1 he wrote his family that he thought he had completed thirty-seven letters to the Alta, but, unknown to him, a number of these would never reach the paper (see MTL , pp. 134–136).

The Grand Duchess Marie, later duchess of Edinburgh, was the only daughter of Alexander and his wife, Maria Alexandrovna. She was thirteen at this time, and, as Clemens observed in chapter 37 of The Innocents Abroad, a favorite with her father. The “Grand Duke” was the emperor’s fourth surviving son, Sergius Alexandrovitch, who was ten.

The emperor’s oldest living son was Alexander Alexandrovitch (1845–1894), who would become Czar Alexander III in 1881. His “palace” was immediately adjacent to the emperor’s.

Michael Nicholaevitch (1832–1909) was the youngest brother of the emperor and, since 1862, governor-general of the Caucasus.

The individuals mentioned in this paragraph remain obscure, but were probably: Prince Nicholas Dolgorouki, aide-de-camp to the emperor; Count Festetics, a Polish officer on the staff of the governor-general; Governor Kotzebue, aide-de-camp to the emperor and governor of New Russia, whom Julius Moulton described as “a noble specimen of the Russian military class” (Saint Louis Missouri Republican, 22 October 1867); and Admiral Glasenapp, commander of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

An officer from the U.S.S. Swatara wrote the Brooklyn Eagle (11 October 1867) that “some of the performances of these people are worthy of repetition. During the presentation to the Arch Duke Michael, of Russia, one man, immediately after his introduction, stepped up to the Duke, said, Where is your cabinet? The Duke showed not surprise but said, Follow me! showed him his cabinet, and then returned to finish the presentation.” Paine presented this anecdote in his selection from the notebooks, identifying the passenger’s remark as “Say, Dook, where’s the water-closet?” ( MTN , p. 80). And in Mark Twain: A Biography Paine quoted an unidentified memorandum by Clemens which was ostensibly written “seventeen years” after the event. “I observed that the most of the Russian dignitaries wore a very small piece of ribbon in the lapels of their coats. That little touch of color struck my fancy, and it seemed to me a good idea to add it to my own attractions; not imagining that it had any special significance.” Clemens said he was embarrassed when Count Festetics inquired “what order of nobility I belonged to” ( MTB , pp. 334–335).

Here and in each entry through that for “Aug 29” Clemens has inadvertently fallen behind one day in his dating. The entry under “Aug. 27” actually conflates the events of that and the next day. The Quaker City sailed from Yalta on the evening of August 28, arriving back in Constantinople on August 30, according to Captain Duncan’s log.

Julius Moulton identified Wrangel as “the Ambassador to Washington, about six years ago” (Saint Louis Missouri Republican, 22 October 1867).

“Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a boisterous, whole-souled, jolly old brick of a nobleman, came with the rest. He is a man of progress and enterprise—and representative man of the age—what is called a ‘rustler,’ in California. He is the Chief Director of the railway system of Russia—a sort of railroad king. In his line he is making things move right along in this country” ( TIA , p. 162).

General Franz Eduard Ivanovitch Todleben, an aide-de-camp-general to the emperor and director-general of engineers, had planned and overseen the land defenses of Sebastopol.

According to “Esculapius” in the London Times for 12 September 1867, “the banquet on board the Quaker City on the eve of departure was a pleasant episode of the occasion. Among the numerous guests aboard were Governor-General Dr. Kotzebue, Prince Dolgozowsy, Baron Sternberg, Admiral Glassenapp, &c. During the occasion one of the officers remarked, ‘that a delegation from any of the Powers or Courts of Europe would not have been entertained by the Emperor at his palace in so courteous and hospitable a manner as he extended to you Americans on Monday.’ ” In his Alta letter from Smyrna Mark Twain was still musing on the “beautiful little devil”: “In that Russian town of Yalta I danced an astonishing sort of dance an hour long, and one I had never heard of before, with the most beautiful girl that ever lived, and we talked incessantly, and laughed exhaustingly, and neither one ever knew what the other was driving at” ( TIA , pp. 166–167).

Edward Joy Morris, United States minister resident to Turkey (1861–1869) and his wife spent the night of August 30 on board the Quaker City, according to Captain Duncan’s log (2 September 1867).

A resolution endorsing the Cretan rebellion against the Turks was passed by the United States House of Representatives on 18 July 1867. On July 22 Secretary of State William Seward conveyed the resolution “declaring sympathy with the suffering people of Crete” to Minister Resident Morris, who in turn relayed it to the Turkish government. “His Highness, while apparently surprised at the character of the resolution and the order of Congress for its communication . . . made no comments whatever on its subject matter” (U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs Washington, 1868, pt. 2, pp. 14–15). Since they had already spent $15,000,000 by the end of 1867 in attempting to quash the rebellion, the Turks undoubtedly were offended by the American resolution. “Knowledge of the affair has at once become public throughout Europe” the New York Times reported on August 24.

The delay was caused by difficulty in taking on needed coal. Captain Duncan recorded on August 31: “Coal Brig alongside and after an argument among the workmen lasting the whole forenoon work was begun in the afternoon but at a pace that bred utter despair among all our passengers. When shall we get our coal in is the question—some time next week—perhaps.” Despite the absence of detail, Clemens had nevertheless been busy, for on September 1 he wrote his family: “I am staying in the ship, tonight. I generally stay on shore when we are in port. But yesterday I just ran myself down. Dan Slote, my room-mate, is on shore. He remained here while we went up the Black Sea, but it seems he has not got enough of it yet” ( MTL , p. 136).

On 3 September 1867 Dr. Benjamin Nesbit and several other passengers (probably including Clemens) visited an Armenian charity hospital and insane asylum in Scutari and were guided there by “Mr. H Bavonig ? Matteosian M.D.” (Benjamin Nesbit journal, 2 September 1867; PH in MTP).

“The chief female personage of the Empire, however, greater than any wife, is the mother of the Sultan, the Valideh Sultan. The Valideh Sultan of the day has frequently exercised a direct and important influence on home and foreign politics, and assiduous court was paid to her by ministers of state and political intriguers” (Murray’s Constantinople, p. 19).

According to Turkish law the eldest surviving male in the sultan’s family succeeded him. Abdul-Aziz attempted unsuccessfully to change the law for the benefit of his son.

Probably Clemens’ phonetic rendering of the name Buyukdereh, a village several miles up the Bosporus. “Many of the rich merchants of Constantinople reside there, and go down to their business every morning by steamer” (Murray’s Constantinople, p. 96).

Although no account of Samson figures in his dispatches to the New York Tribune, Mark Twain probably did complete something on the subject for The Innocents Abroad manuscript. On 29 April 1869, however, Clemens wrote Elisha Bliss, who had suggested several cuts in the manuscript then being set in type: “Certainly—snatch out Sampson—it isn’t even necessary to mention him” ( MTLP , p. 21).

In a lecture based on the Quaker City materials and written in January 1868, Clemens said: “One of the sultan’s great officers came into office without a cent, & went out in a few years & built himself a palace worth 3 million. It brought tears to my eyes in that far foreign land—It was so like home. The Sultan confiscated it. He said he liked to see a man prosper, but he didn’t like to see him get wealthy on 2,000 a year & no perquisites” (TS in MTP).

Captain Duncan recorded in his log for 5 September 1867 that the small gunboat Swatara “was at anchor before the town, we passed along close by her and exchanged friendly nods with her officers. Scarcely was our anchor down when a boat was sent bearing an officer with offers of assistance should we be in need of any.”

From Smyrna Clemens wrote the Alta on September 6 that he had seen “three veins of oyster shells, just as you have seen quartz veins exposed in the cutting of a road in California” on a cliff “five hundred feet above the sea” ( TIA , p. 169). In 1869 Clemens would write to Elisha Bliss, who was supervising the setting of The Innocents Abroad, that the “ ‘suppositions’ I dealt in about the oyster shells were not funny, but foolish—and so, being disgusted I marked them out of the proof and was sorry I had ever printed them—so I think it much better to let them stay out” ( MTLP , p. 21). Nevertheless, Clemens acquiesced in Bliss’s decision to include them, and they appear in chapter 39 of the book.

Saint Polycarp was burned at the stake in 155. His supposed tomb is among the ruins of a stadium in Ephesus.

Clemens wrote the Alta on September 5 that “Smyrna is a very old city. . . . and here was located one of the old original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of in Revelations” ( TIA , p. 164).

According to the log of Captain Duncan, Samos was passed on the morning of September 7.

When the Quaker City arrived in Beirut on 10 September, those pilgrims who expected to visit Damascus discovered their plans had been disrupted: the stage-coach made only one daily trip, could carry only twelve passengers, and had already left for that day. Since the ship was to stop in Beirut for only about five days, the passengers decided among themselves who should have the privilege of a carriage ride to Damascus. While most of the remaining passengers toured Beirut and its environs, some went in small groups to visit Baalbek and Damascus by horseback, all except Clemens’ party returning to the Quaker City afterwards.

Clemens wrote to his family on September 11: “We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragoman to take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c. then to Lake Genassareth (Sea of Tiberias,) then South through all the celebrated Scriptural localities to Jerusalem—then to the Dead Sea, the Cave of Macpelah and up to Joppa where the ship will be. We shall be in the saddle three weeks—we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman and two other servants, and we pay five dollars a day apiece, in gold” ( MTL , p. 136).

Clemens made the following entry on a full blank page of the notebook, probably on the day the pilgrimage began. He later completed the entry above, dated “Sept. 11,” and canceled this parallel passage.

That is, Dr. Abraham Reeves Jackson, Julia Newell, and Dr. and Mrs. James H. Payne. Jackson’s letter to the Monroe County (Pa.) Democrat characterized all the pilgrims’ response to Baalbek: “One is naturally inclined to wonder how these huge blocks were transported such long distances, and placed in their present elevated positions. Certainly we have no means in the present day by which it could be effected. . . . Of course among so many Yankees as compose our company, there was much ‘guessing’ as to how the thing was done, some thinking the stones had been rolled; others, that they had been moved by immense derricks, &c.” (14 September 1867). Clemens devoted half of his Alta letter of September 17 to the “noble ruin” of Baalbek: “I cannot conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they occupy in the temples” ( TIA , p. 191).

In chapters 43 and 44 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens represented this and the following paragraph as “quoted” from his notebook. Although quoted in part, each has been elaborately paraphrased and expanded.

Clemens’ impatience was explained in chapter 43 of The Innocents Abroad: “Not content with doubling the legitimate stages to avoid traveling on Sunday, they switched off the main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain called Figia, because Baalam’s ass had drank there once. So we journeyed on, through the terrible hills and deserts and the roasting sun, and then far into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam’s ass, the patron saint of all pilgrims like us.” The party was indeed traveling rapidly; Murray’s guidebook indicates that the distance between Baalbek and Damascus could not be covered “profitably and pleasantly in less than 3 days” (A Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1858, 2:554).

In chapter 45 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens explained that he “lay prostrate with a violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus.”

When Clemens gave the story of Naaman in his Alta letter, he had obviously consulted his Murray handbook as well as the Bible and could state that the servant of “Naaman’s wife remarked one day that if the Prophet Elisha, who was living down in Samaria somewhere, would only take hold of Naaman’s case, he could cure him” ( TIA , p. 196).

“In front of the gate, shaded by walnut-trees, is a small cupola, covering a tomb said to be that of St. George, the porter who aided St. Paul in his escape and became a martyr to his benevolence” (Murray’s 1858 Syria, 2:478).

“Kefr Hauwar, a large prosperous village surrounded by gardens, orchards, and fruitful fields. . . . Tradition or fate has placed here one of the numerous tombs of Nimrod; but the spot is now unhonoured, if not altogether unknown” (Murray’s 1858 Syria, 2:450). In his September 17 Alta letter Clemens approximated the name as “Kaf’r Houer” but would not vouch for his spelling. In chapter 45 of The Innocents Abroad the village became simply “Jonesborough.”

The Castle of Subeibeh was “one of the finest ruins in Syria; and one of the most perfect and imposing specimens of the military architecture of the Phœnicians, or possibly of the Syro-Grecians, extant. No traveller should fail to visit it” (Murray’s 1858 Syria, 2:447–448).

“Jordan Am a Hard Road to Trabbel” by T. F. Briggs was a popular, mildly comic plantation song.

Murray’s 1858 Syria, citing the Book of Matthew, reminded its readers that “on one or other of Mount Hermon’s wooded peaks” the Transfiguration took place. Murray’s also corrected the “curious tradition” that it was at Banias that Christ healed the woman afflicted with an issue of blood (2:447).

That is, Lake Huleh, mentioned in the Old Testament as the Waters of Merom.

By late September, when Clemens wrote to the Alta from Tiberias ( TIA , p. 231), he had already found this incident more significant than his brief entry might suggest. There, and again in chapter 47 of The Innocents Abroad, he developed at length his satiric rendering of the parsimonious pilgrims who lost their chance to sail on Galilee because they hesitated to pay the boatman’s price.

In the October 1870 issue of the Galaxy Mark Twain published “Curious Relic for Sale,” which seems to be based on a recollection of an encounter with the person identified as a “ruin” here. Harassed by Arabs seeking “bucksheesh,” Clemens said he was pursued in particular by one young Arab who was willing to exchange all his possessions for such contributions. “He was smoking the ‘humbliest’ pipe I ever saw—a dingy, funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail” ( CG , p. 82). Clemens explained that he bought the pipe and was given a “pouch of most unspeakably villainous tobacco” and proceeded to smoke them on the horseback trip through the Holy Land.

The sentence was added in the margin of the manuscript page that faces the page containing the three preceding paragraphs about Galilee. The line is loosely quoted from Byron’s “Destruction of Sennacherib,” which Mark Twain identified in his Alta letter as the only poem he had ever learned by heart (see TIA , p. 235).

Clemens elaborated this notion in a passage that was evidently written for (but omitted from) The Innocents Abroad: “Seen afar off,—as far as from America to the Holy Land—the ancient children of Israel seem almost too lovely & too holy for this coarse earth; but seen face to face, in their legitimate descendants, with no hope of distance to soften their harsh features & no glamor of Sabbath-school glory to beautify them, they are like any other savages. . . . Many of them were superior to the Digger Indians of California, but not all of them could rank the Sioux of the Great Plains. If this be doubted, read the Old Testament & then go among the Arabs of to-day in Palestine. . . . That six millions of such people should be selected & remain the chosen, of God, out of the untold millions & billions of far more promising subjects who were born & died in other lands during those long ages, is a mystery we may not solve—is simply a curious unexplained fact” (TS in MTP, DV 134).

Mark Twain used this quotation, “imperfectly remembered, no doubt,” in the Alta letter published on 2 February 1868 ( TIA , pp. 240–241) and incorporated it into chapter 49 of The Innocents Abroad. Alexander E. Jones has pointed out that the “ ‘quotation’ is in fact a fairly accurate rendition of a portion of the Masonic ritual for the Fellow Craft degree” (“Mark Twain and Freemasonry,” American Literature 26 November 1954: 368, n. 27).

The Xs represent Clemens's symbol for crosses (see facsimile).

“Whoever shall write the Boyhood of Jesus ingeniously,” Clemens noted in chapter 51 of The Innocents Abroad, “will make a book which will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike. I judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth than any of our speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to.” Clemens’ interest in the life of Christ had been prompted by reading the Apocryphal New Testament in New York (see Notebook 8, note 34). The entry has been written across and perpendicular to the two previous paragraphs.

Murray’s 1858 Syria described “a fragment of a large granite column suspended from the roof, and another fragment of a marble one below it: this column, the monks inform us, was hacked through by the infidels in the vain attempt to pull down the roof, but was miraculously sustained in its place without visible support, and has since remained, and probably will remain for many a day to come, ‘a suspended miracle’ ” (2:361).

According to Murray’s skeptical account, “ ‘The Table of Christ’—a small vaulted chamber with a large table-shaped fragment of solid rock projecting about 3 ft. from the floor. This, according to tradition . . . is the very table at which our Lord and his disciples frequently ate both before and after His resurrection” (1858 Syria, 2:362).

“The only remarkable things here are the caverns hewn in the cliffs above the houses. They are rude irregular excavations, the object of which it is difficult to determine; but they strike one forcibly as fit habitations for a witch” (Murray’s 1858 Syria, 2:358).

Clemens has added this sentence in the margin of the page beside the two preceding paragraphs. In chapter 51 of The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain explained his meaning: the inhabitants of Endor were “the wildest horde of half-naked savages we have found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of hovels of the dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out of crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and silence of the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob were struggling about the horses’ feet and blocking the way.”

See Luke 7:11–18.

Clemens probably added “El Fulah Castle” when he wrote “(this should have come before Shunem)” in the paragraph headed “Ancient Ruined Castle.” He inserted “(cruse . . . widow” without a caret above this paragraph, which originally began “(lemon orchards & dung).” The events at Shunem are told in 2 Kings 4:1–37.

The battle of Mount Tabor, fought in April 1799.

“The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who brought about the difficulty by showing their revolvers when they did not intend to use them—a thing which is deemed bad judgment in California” ( TIA , p. 258).

Mrs. Severance noted that on “Monday morning we arose very early, about two o’clock, but the moon was shining quite brightly. We waited a little longer than was necessary, but were in the saddle at four. The road was very bad, mostly over steep and rocky hills. While we were breakfasting another party had passed us, but we thought it could hardly be any one from the ‘Quaker City.’ However, it was not long before we came up to them, and it proved to be the eight gentlemen who had started from Beirut and gone via Baalbec and Damascus. They had left their tents behind for a single night, and were pressing on for Jerusalem” ( JLS , p. 172). “Monday morning” was September 23, so Clemens’ date is in error. Clemens’ dates for entries through September 28 remained one day behind.

See 1 Samuel 4: 12–21.

Clemens was evidently not innocent of the “vandalism” for which he attacked his companions in chapter 45 of The Innocents Abroad:

The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their pockets full of specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandalism could be stopped. They broke off fragments from Noah’s tomb; from the exquisite sculptures of the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in Damascus; from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough; from the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary walls of the Castle of Banias; and now they have been hacking and chipping these old arches here that Jesus looked upon in the flesh. Heaven protect the Sepulchre when this tribe invades Jerusalem!

Edaward Robinson described his visit to the Pool of Siloam and his explorations of this underground passage in Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petraea (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1841).

Clemens names several of the traditional stations along the Via Dolorosa.

Mark Twain remarked to his Alta readers that there was “nothing more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the houses of Dives and Lazarus of the parable, and ‘Moreover the dog’ ” ( TIA , p. 291). He dropped this minimal joke, adapted from Luke 16:21, when he revised the Jerusalem passage for chapter 55 of The Innocents Abroad.

In chapter 54 of The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain claimed: “Nothing has any fascination for us, now, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been there every day, and have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of everything else.” In fact all the notes made on this church (up to “Sept. 24”) apparently date from the single day Mark Twain spent in Jerusalem before striking out for Bethlehem on a three-day excursion.

In chapter 55 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens suggested that the trip to the Jordan, Jericho, and the Dead Sea was planned as a diversion, although it is apparent that it always was part of their itinerary. Murray’s 1858 Syria instructed the traveler that the excursion “will occupy 3 days, and the best way of arranging it, both for convenience and profit, is to encamp the first night at Jericho, taking care to visit the objects of interest near it in the evening; start the second morning very early for the Jordan and Dead Sea, and spend the second night at Mar Sâba. An early ride the third morning brings us to Bethlehem” (1:190). Clemens’ party seems to have followed this schedule, leaving Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, September 25, and returning on Friday, September 27.

Clemens’ impatience with the Holy Land was expressed as he wrote of this custom for his Alta correspondence: “If they were to turn one loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane till these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up, sins and all. They wouldn’t care. Mutton-chops and sin is good enough living for them” ( TIA , p. 290).

“They showed us the tomb of Lazarus. . . . And they showed us also a large ‘Fountain of Lazarus,’ and in the centre of the village the ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a man of property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great injustice; they give one the impression that he was poor” ( TIA , p. 293).

Clemens reported that some “lawless Bedouins” had “marched upon a camp of our pilgrims by the Jordan, and they only saved their lives by stealing away and flying to Jerusalem under whip and spur in the darkness of the night. Another of our parties had been fired on from an ambush and then attacked in the open day” ( TIA , p. 292).

Mark Twain developed this punch line in an Alta passage ostensibly reporting a conversation in Jerusalem (see TIA , pp. 302–303.)

Alexander E. Jones reports that the interest which Clemens felt in King Solomon’s Temple and Godfrey de Bouillon stemmed from his interest in Masonic lore. “To a Master Mason this was an awesome spot” and Mark Twain “who elsewhere viewed sacred shrines with a jaundiced eye, behaved like a true Brother. Securing a piece of this special cedar wood, he had it fashioned into a gavel, which he sent to the Worshipful Master of his mother lodge.” The gavel was inscribed as follows: “This Mallet is of Cedar cut in the Forest of Lebanon, whence Solomon obtained the Timbers for the Temple. The handle was cut by Bro. Clemens himself from a cedar planted just outside the walls of Jerusalem by Bro. Godfrey De Bouillon, the first Christian Conqueror of that City, 19th of July 1099. The gavel in its present form was made at Alexandria, Egypt, by order of Bro. Clemens” (“Mark Twain and Freemasonry,” American Literature 26 November 1954: 365, n. 8). The gavel was presented in March 1868.

In Marcha 1799 Napoleon refused to accept the surrender of the Muslim defenders, slaughtering four thousand captives.

The Quaker City arrived at Alexandria on October 2, although most passengers did not visit the city until the following morning.

Clemens reported that he and Jack Van Nostrand “found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the Prince of Wales had stopped there once” (The Innocents Abroad, chapter 57).

Clemens explained in The Innocents Abroad, chapter 58, that the Egyptian locomotives burned “mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose” and that “sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, ‘D—n these plebians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King.’ ”

The canal connects Alexandria with the Nile.

“A nephew of the late Dr. Gibson, of Jamestown, speaking to a Pittsburg reporter, said that when his uncle and aunt were having their pictures taken in front of the Pyramids, Mark Twain who afterwards made the Doctor famous in his ‘Innocents Abroad,’ hired a band of dirty Bedouin Arabs to file in behind the group, where they were taken in various artistic and picturesque attitudes. The feelings of the Doctor when he received the picture can better be imagined than described” (quoted from the Greenville Pa. Advance Argus, 21 July 1887, by Henry F. Pommer in “Mark Twain’s ‘Commissioner of the United States,’ ” American Literature 34 November 1962: 390).

In 1811 Mohammed Ali ordered the massacre of all the Memlooks. After being trapped in the Citadel of Cairo, “all were shot except one, Emin Bey, who escaped by leaping his horse over a gap in the then dilapidated wall” (A Handbook for Travellers in Egypt, 4th ed., rev. London: John Murray, 1873, p. 128).

Dr. Jackson reported from Alexandria in his eighteenth letter to the Monroe County (Pa.) Democrat: “Here is the Arab or Turkish grandee, mounted on a gaily caparisoned Dongola horse, preceded by his groom bearing a long staff, and running ahead to clear the way before him.”

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo had the most important collection of Egyptian artifacts outside the British Museum. But Mrs. Severance reported that “the best of the collection is in Paris now, at the Exposition” ( JLS , p. 187).

“The road from Cairo to Shoobra lies along a beautiful avenue composed of the sycamore fig, and the acacia known in Egypt as the ‘lebbekh,’ a tree of most rapid growth, and of great beauty when in blossom. . . . The palace and garden of Shoobra were the work of Mohammed Ali, whose favourite residence it was. . . . The palace itself has nothing to recommend it but the view from the windows” (Murray’s Egypt, p. 156).

The British government had been trying since 1864 to negotiate the release of British diplomats and missionaries held prisoner by King Theodore of Abyssinia. After an ultimatum demanding their release on 17 August 1867 went unanswered, an expeditionary force set out from Bombay under command of General Robert Napier. On October 6 Napier published a proclamation directed at the rebellious Abyssinians, which said in part: “Now, all friendly measures tried to free them having proved useless, I am coming, commanded by the Queen, with an army to liberate them” (The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the year 1867 New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1870, p. 6).

On 5 October Mrs. Fairbanks had written the Cleveland Herald that “our Purser Robert Vail . . . has made himself the hero of a pretty romance” and would “marry the handsome Turkish sister of the Vice Consul. An alarming case of ‘love at first sight’ ” (published 11 December 1867). Dan Slote left the ship in Egypt for several more months of touring Europe. On 20 November Clemens would write from New York that Slote’s mother “sent her carriage this morning, & I went up & kissed the whole family for Dan from his mother straight through aunts, cousins, sisters-in-law & everything, down to his youngest sister” ( MTBus , p. 95).

Captain Duncan recorded the results of “rolling and tumbling about in Old Atlantic Style. Most of the passengers sea sick—a large sea rolling in from the westward . . . Dishes smash Organ top thrown off, Flower basket thrown down, While on deck salt water bathing is done on a large scale at short notice. If a luckless passenger ventures forward he is sure of a drenching” (CCD, 11 October 1867).

This entry is in blue ink on the back cover of the notebook and summarizes the itinerary which comprises the contents of the notebook.

This line and the two following are on a slip of paper pasted to the back cover of the notebook; the first and third are in ink, the second in pencil. The writing has been so obscured by time that the text here depends on transcriptions made by Bernard DeVoto.

The first entry in the following fragment in the private collection of Roger Barrett of Chicago is clearly related to the wedding of Robert Vail, the ship’s purser. Although it was probably not torn from this notebook, it is given here as supplementary information:

Vail’s courtship.

Down in tar-schoonersloop & back in kivered wagon.

Wm Mason—What matter wh yr leg?—Me—WHear you are writing book?

Salting bird’s tail.

Nautical Yarn full of technicalities

Some N.Y. Clerks.

Murray’s Constantinople noted that among the “best shops in the Stambûl Bazâr” was “Sadoullah & Co., ‘Faraway Moses,’ whose shop is decorated in Turkish style, and who do a large business especially with Americans. Their carpets, which are made for them in Smyrna and in the interior, are beautiful, and their modern embroideries and woven stuffs are very good. They deliver goods free to England, and make arrangements with Americans” (p. 156). See also chapter 35 of The Innocents Abroad.

This and all subsequent entries were written with the notebook inverted.

Henry and George Duncan, sons of the captain.

In chapter 47 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens noted that the lizards were moving in to take over the desert through which he was passing and that there were also “a few ants . . . in this desert place, but merely to spend the summer. They brought their provisions from Ain Mellahah—eleven miles.”

“One of our passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return to buy a pair of gloves, ‘Allong—re tay trankeel—maybe ve coom Moonday,’ and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said” ( TIA , p. 316). Julia Newell sent the same anecdote to the Janesville (Wis.) Gazette on 29 July: “This lady would seriously say to the shop girls in Paris ‘No buy now—we coom gain Moonday’ ” (published 12 September 1867).

This cryptic entry seems to suggest that the Quaker City excursionists descended upon Consul General J. H. Goodenow in Constantinople before he had eaten breakfast.

Possibly a reference to the “Committee on Applications,” ostensibly designated to screen prospective passengers for their social and moral acceptability. As Dr. Jackson explained in a vituperative letter written after the voyage, “All applicants . . . were required to submit their requests in writing, accompanied by their vouchers of respectability” to this committee. But, Jackson claimed, it was eventually discovered that “the committee was only a myth, and that behind the curtain which veiled the imaginary faces of its members beamed only the bland countenance of the manager himself, and that all the essentials of a good character were covered by the ‘twelve hundred and fifty dollars, currency’ ” required for passage (New York Herald, 21 November 1867).

Apparently the words of Joshua William Davis.

The items marked by a marginal X here and below seem to be reminders for some of the “Oracle’s” malapropisms or for jibes at other passengers. Clemens used “Sylla and Carybdis” in chapter 32 of The Innocents Abroad where he described an encounter between the “Oracle” and “one of the boys”:

“It ain’t mentioned in the Bible!—this place ain’t—well now, what place is this, since you know so much about it?”

“Why it’s Scylla and Charybdis.”

“Scylla and Cha—confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!”

Clemens is recalling the visit with the Russian Grand Duke Michael. Mrs. Severance noted: “The Duke insisted on the gentlemen wearing their hats, and preceded us around to the other side of the house” ( JLS , p. 144).

“As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by some plushlegged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a franc for it; but after talking with the company half an hour, the Emperor of Russia and his family conducted us all through their mansion themselves. They made no charge. They seemed to take a real pleasure in it” (The Innocents Abroad, chapter 37).

According to chapter 4 of The Innocents Abroad, the upper after cabin of the Quaker City, “a handsome saloon fifty or sixty feet long,” which “the unregenerated called . . . the ‘Synagogue,’ ” was used for prayer meetings.

In an August letter from Naples Clemens had fumed, in a frank parenthesis: “(I am not aware that I know what I am trying to write about; this is the first time I have been on board the ship for six weeks, and this morning I was pluming myself upon the quiet day I was going to have, but now I have only written a dozen lines here in the cabin and already all those anticipations of quiet are blighted; there is one party of Italian thieves fiddling and singing for pennies on one side of the ship, and a bagpiper, who only knows one tune, on the other; I am expecting to go crazy every minute, and if I do, I hope I will be driven to massacre those parties before I come to my senses again)” ( TIA , pp. 83–84).

Bloodgood Haviland Cutter, “Poet-Lariat.”

Dr. Edward Andrews (“The Oracle”) is characterized in The Innocents Abroad by his “eternal spy-glass” (chapter 32).

In chapter 2 of The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain noted that Dr. William Gibson, the commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, undertook to collect “seeds, and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil, the Smithsonian Institute.” Gibson’s penchant for artifacts may have extended to quite literal image-breaking. In chapter 58 of The Innocents Abroad an illusgtration depicts a “relic-hunter” perched on a ladder propped against the Sphinx: “While we stood looking, a wart, or an excrescence of some kind, appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar clink of a hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our well-meaning reptiles—I mean relic-hunters—had crawled up there and was trying to break a ‘specimen’ from the face of this the most majestic creation the hand of man has wrought. . . . Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant excursionists—highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his enterprise.”

Mrs. Fairbanks also viewed the ancient migration ironically: “Perhaps the principle of contrast enhanced the charm of Attic’s shores, for we had come hither Alexandria from Palestine—a land that is beautiful only in books. Certain it is, that the ‘Promised Land’ could scarcely have brightened the eyes of the Children of Israel with a more glad surprise, than that with which we looked upon the waving fields, the towering palm groves, and the fertile banks of the coquettish Nile” (Cleveland Herald, 11 December 1867).

In chapter 58 of The Innocents Abroad Clemens reported being assaulted for “bucksheesh” by a “howling swarm of beggars” near the pyramids. “A sheik . . . was with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had adopted a new code—it was millions for defense, but not a cent for bucksheesh. I asked him if he could persuade the others to depart if we paid him. He said yes—for ten francs. We accepted the contract.”

In a letter published in the 7 December Janesville (Wis.) Gazette Julia Newell reported that “one of our party John Greenwood, an agent for Barnum, negotiated in Alexandria for two genuine mummies for the new museum. He could obtain them at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars each, which caused Mark Twain to wish that all his dead ancestors were mummies, and he would sell them all at that price, up to the last one that died, and I think he would.”

Despite the objections enumerated below, Clemens did visit the battlefields of the Crimean War at Sebastopol when the Quaker City touched there. The petition was written with the notebook inverted, on two pages chosen at random near the back of the notebook, but has been moved to this position on the evidence of a clear date.

Emendations and Doubtful Readings

endways • end- | ways

sea-walls • sea- | walls

our • possibly ‘on’

gas-lights • gas- | lights

moonlight • moon- | light

overlooking • over- | looking

barefoot • bare- | foot

gateway • gate- | way

cannon-balls • cannon- | balls

swallow-tail • swallow- | tail

fireworks • fire- | works

foothills • foot- | hills

servingmen • possibly ‘serving men’

overlooks • possibly ‘over looks’

waterways • water- | ways

Jeptha, Judge • possibly ‘Jeptha Judge’

Graveyard • Grave- | yard

daylight • day- | light

headdresses • possibly ‘head dresses’ or ‘head-dresses’

solid • soild

scalp-lock • scalp- | lock

overlook • over- | look

blow out • possibly ‘blowout’ or ‘blow-out’

of olive trees in a plain • of olive in a plain | trees

alongside • along- | side

them • possibly ‘then’

Cheese-monger’s • Cheese- | monger’s

Textual Notes

Sam . . . Sept. written lengthwise on the front endpaper

Italy. written in the upper right corner of the page and boxed

⟦In Rome. boxed

$350,000 ‘5’ written over ‘3’

—wipe . . . necklace insertion overwrites the word ‘Sultan’ on the line below

Greece. written diagonally in the upper left corner of the page

The Piraeus.— Greece. ‘The Piraeus.—’ written diagonally in the upper left corner and ‘Greece.’ in the upper right corner of the page

haveing ‘ing’ written over ‘e’

Themistocles’ Tomb. written in the top margin of the page above ‘these countries’

stranggled ‘g’ written over ‘n’

well r fluted ‘f’ written over what appears to be ‘r’

chaimney ‘i’ written over ‘a’

o in ‘i’ written over ‘o’

drawing a map is drawn across and extends below the inscription ‘hills. . . . two.’

Propyliaeeaa ‘a’ written over ‘i’; ‘a’ written over second ‘e’; last ‘a’ cancelled

2,5600,000 ‘6’ written over ‘5’

Turkey written diagonally in the upper left corner of the page

The Bosphorus boxed

The lovely . . . are palaces. written lengthwise in the margin beside ‘Porters. . . . Costumes.’ , on the verso page which faces the recto page beginning at ‘The Bosphorus’

Russia boxed

drawing the map is drawn on the right-hand page opposite ‘Beardless . . . Seralgio” ’

Within . . . partnership written in the top margin of the page above ‘chance at’

Russia boxed

Aug. 253 ‘3’ written over ‘5’

papved ‘v’ written over ‘p’

JYoltea ‘Y’ written over ‘J’; ‘a’ written over ‘e’

Russia boxed

whiat ‘at’ written over ‘i’

haves ‘s’ written over ‘v’ and ‘e’ canceled

Committee . . . Gibson a brace appears to the right of the four names; ‘Committee’ appears to the right of the brace

Constantinople. written in the top margin of the page above ‘view of the ship’

Ephesus. written diagonally in the upper left corner of the page above ‘Tomb of’

St. Paul interlined without a caret above ‘Colossus’

Sept. 110 ‘0’ written over ‘1’

Beirut. half of the page is blank below this entry

Noah’s Tomb. written diagonally and boxed in the upper left corner of the page

&c met ‘met’ written over ‘&c’

—— Zeb ‘Zeb’ written over a line indicating a blank to be filled

Where . . . ground. written in the top margin of the page above ‘gi giant trees’

a b an Arab ‘n’ added to ‘a’ and ‘Arab’ written over ‘b’

invi ested ‘es’ written over ‘i’

Jordan . . . travel. written in the top margin of the page above ‘we washed’ and partially circled

the Savior’s . . . place line left blank for half the width of the page after ‘the’, space left open on next line before ‘Savior’

theirre ‘re’ written over ‘ir’

Jordan. ¶J The banks ‘J’ indented to begin a new paragraph; it was overwritten by the continuation of the paragraph originally ending at ‘Jordan.’

Meronm ‘m’ written over ‘n’

30–31–2 written in the upper right corner of the page

Tiberias written in the top boxed

Splendid . . . Galilee. written lengthwise in the right margin of a left-hand page beside ‘learned Jewish . . . between here’ on the facing right-hand page

Imagine . . . Nazareth written lengthwise on the page across ‘Crusaders . . . columns’

Like . . . suspect. written lengthwise in the left margin of the page with a caret indicating placement

El Fulah Castle interlined before ‘Shunem’, probably when Clemens wrote in the following paragraph ‘(this should have come before Shunem)’

(cruse . . . widow the intended position of this phrase is uncertain; interlined without a caret above ‘& dung’

10199 ‘1’ written over ‘0’

Palace of Caiaphas written lengthwise in the left margin of the page beside ‘Pool . . . Judgment’

olive trees in a plain ‘in a plain’ interlined with a caret inadvertently placed between ‘olive’ and ‘trees’; emended in reading text, not emended when MS linebreaks are turned on

woman drawing water— interlined without a caret above ‘spring dug down’

Stromboli . . . Egypt. written in ink on the back cover

260. . . scars written on a paper strip pasted to the back cover; ‘Far-away Moses.’ written in pencil, the other inscriptions in ink

5 canes . . . boxes. written in the upper left corner of the page and boxed; two lines, ‘Maybe . . . breakfast.’, modified to fit around the left side of box

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