From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn. ... Fifth edition

Front matter

■ ■ ■ I This volume is complete in itself, thotigh it is the First Part of a Journey Round the World, of which the Second Part is now published, with the title "From Egypt to Japan." The volumes are uniform in style and naturally go together, though either is complete without the other. FROM THE LAKES OE KILLARNEY TO THE GOLDEN HORN. Bv HENRY M. FIELD, D.D. FIFTH EDITION. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, SUCCESSORS TO SCRIBNEIl. ARMSTRONG * CO, CorTBIGHT, 1878, BT 8CBIBNER, ARMSTRONG « OO. Trow's .Printing and Bookbinding Co,, 205-213 East \zth St., NEW YORK. When a man's house is " left unto him desolate " by the loss of one who filled it with sunshine — when there is no light in the window ancl no fire on the hearth — it is a natural impulse to leave his darkened home, and become a wanderer on the face of the earth.

Such was the beginning of the journey recorded here. Thus driven from his home, the writer crossed the seas, and passed from land to land, going on and on, till he had compassed the round globe. The story of all this is much too long to be comprised in one volume. The present, therefore, does not pass beyond Europe, but stops on the shores of the Bosphorus, in sight of Asia. Another will take us to the Nile and the G anges, to Egypt and India, to Burmah and Java, to China and Japan. It should be added, to explain an occasional personal allusion, that the writer was accompanied by his niece (who had lived so long in his family as to be like his own child), whose gentle presence cheered his lonely hours, and cast a soft and quiet light amid the shadows. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The Melancholy Sea

Queenstown, Ireland, Monday, May 24, 1875. We landed this morning at two o'clock, by the light of the moon, which was just past the full, and which showed dis tinctly the beautiful harbor, surrounded by hills and forts, and filled with ships at anchor, through which the tender that brought us off from the steamer glided silently to the town, which lay in death-like stillness before us. Eight days and six hours took us from shore to shore ! Eight days we were out of sight of land. Water, water every where ! Ocean to the right of us, ocean to the left of us, ocean in front of us, and ocean behind us, with two or three miles of ocean under us. But our good ship, the City of Berlin (which seemed proud of bearing the name of the capi tal of the new German Empire), bore us over the sea like a conqueror.

She is said to be the largest ship in the world, next to the Great Eastern, being 520 feet long, and carrying 5,500 tons. This was her first voyage, and much interest was felt as to how she " behaved." She carried herself proudly from the start. On Saturday, the loth, seven steam ships, bound for Europe, left New York at about tho same time. Those of the National and the Anchor lines moved off quietly ; then the Celtic, of the White Star line, so famous for its speed, shot down the Bay ; and the French steamer, the Amerique, swept by, firing her guns, rs if boast ing of what she would do. But the Berlin answered not a word. Since a fatal accident, by which a poor fellow was blown to pieces by a premature explosion, the Inman line has dropped the foolish custom of firing a salute every time a ship leaves or touches the dock.

So her guns were silent ; she made no reply to her noisy French neighbor. But at length her huge bulk swung slowly into the stream, and her engines began to move. She had not gone half-way down the bay before she left all her rivals behind, the Frenchman still firing his guns ; even the Celtic, though pressing steam, was soon "nowhere." We did not see the German ship, which sailed at a different hour ; nor the Cunarder, the Algeria (in which were our friends, Prof. R. D. Hitchcock and his family), as she left an hour before us ; but as she has not yet been signalled at Queenstown, she must be some distance behind ;* so that the Berlin may fairly claim the honors of this ocean race. But in crossing the sea speed is secondary to safety and to comfort ; and in these things I can say truly that I never was on board a more magnificent ship (excepting always the Great Eastern, in which I crossed in 1867).

She was never going at full speed, but took it easil}*, as it was her first voy age, and the Captain was anxious to get his new machinery into smo6th working order. The great size of the ship con duces much to comfort. She is more steady, she does not pitch and roll, like the lighter boats that we saw tossing around us, while she was moving majestically through the waves. The saloon, instead of being at the stern, according to the old method of construction, is placed more amidships (after the excellent model first introduced by the White Star line), and covers the whole width of the steamer, which gives light * She came in fifteen hours after us, and the Celtic twenty. The German ship readied Southampton two days later. on both sides. There are four bath-rooms, with marble baths, supplied with salt water, so that one may have the luxury of sea-bathing without going to Rockaway or Coney Island.

In crossing the Gulf Stream the water is warm enough ; but if elsewhere it is too chill, the turn of a cock lets the steam into the bath, which quickly raises it to any degree of temperature. The ventilation is excellent, so that even when the port holes are shut on account of the high sea, the air never becomes impure. The state-rooms are furnished with electric bells, one touch on which brings a steward in an instant. Thus provided for, one may escape, as far as possible, the discomforts of the sea, and enjoy in some degree the comforts and even the luxuries of civilization. Captain Kennedy, who is the Commodore of the fleet, and 6o always commands the newest and best ship of the line, is an admirable seaman, with a quick eye fen* everything, always on deck at critical moments, watching with unsleejj ing vigilance over the safety of all on board.

The order and discipline of the ship is perfect. There is no noise or confu sion. All moves ou quietly. Not a sound is heard, save the occasional cry of the men stretching the sails, and the steady throb, day and night, of the engine, which keeps this huge mass moving on her ocean track. But what a vast machine is such a ship, and how complicated the construction which makes possible such a triumph over the sea. Come up on the upper deck, and look down through this iron grating. You can see to a depth of fifty or sixty feet. It is like looking down into a miner's shaft. And what makes it the more fearful, is that the bottom of the ship is a mass of fire. Thirty-six furnaces are in full blast to heat the steam, and at night, as the red-hot coals that are raked out of the furnaces like melted lava, flash in the faces of the brawny and sweltering men, one might fancy himself looking into some Vulcan's cave, or subterranean region, glowing with an infernal heat.

Thus one of these great ocean steamships 1* is literally a sea monster, that feeds on fire ; and descending into its bowels is (to use the energetic language of Scripture in speaking of Jonah in the whale) like going down into the " belly of hell." All this suggests danger from fire as well as from the sea, and yet, so perfect are the precautions taken, that these glow ing furnaces really guard against danger, as they shorten the time of exposure by insuring quadruple speed in crossing the deep. And yet I can never banish the sense of a danger that is always near from the two destroying elements of fire and water, flood and flame. The very precautions against danger show that it is ever present to the mind of the prudent navigator. Those ten life-boats hung above the deck, with pulleys ready to swing them over the ship's side at a moment's notice, and the axe ready to cut away the ropes, and even casks of water filled to quench the burning thirst of a shipwrecked crew that may be cast helpless on the waves, suggest unpleas ant possibilities, in view of recent disasters ; and one night I went to my berth feeling not quite so easy as in my bed at home, as we were near the banks of Newfoundland, and a dense fog hung over the sea, through which the ship went, making fourteen miles an hour, its fog-whistles scream ing all night long.

This was very well as a warning to other ships to keep out of the way, but would not receive much attention from the icebergs that were floating about, which are very abundant in the Atlantic this summer. We saw one the next day, a huge fellow that might have proved an ugly acquaintance, as one crash on his frozen head would have sent us all to the bottom. But at such times unusual precautions are taken. There are signs in the sudden chilliness of the air of the near approach of an iceberg, which would lead the ship to back out at once from the hug of such a polar bear. In a few hours the fog was all gone ; and the next night, as we sat on deck, the full moon rose out of the waves. In stantly the hum of voices ceased ; conversation was hushed ; and all grew silent before the awful beauty of the scene.

Such an hour suggests not merely poetical but spiritual thoughts — thoughts of the dead as well as thoughts of God. It recalled a passage in David Copperfield, where little David, after the death of his mother, sits at a window and looks out upon the sea, and sees a shining path over the waters, and thinks he sees his mother coming to him upon it from heaven. Maj' it not be that on such a radiant pathway from the skies we sometimes see the angels of God ascending and descending ? But with all these moonlight nights, and sun-risings and sun-settings, the sea had little attraction for me, and its general impression was one of profound melancholy. Perhaps my own mood of mind had something to do with it ; but as ] sat upon deck and looked out upon the " gray and melancholy waste," or lay in my berth and heard the waves rush ing past, I had a feeling more dreary than in the most deso late wilderness.

That sound haunted me ; it was the last I heard at night, and the first in the morning; it mingled with my dreams. I tried to analyze the feeling. Was it my own mental depression that hung like a cloud over the waters ; or was it something in the aspect of nature itself ? Perhaps both. I was indeed floating amid shadows. But I found no sympathy in the sea. On the land Nature soothed and comforted me; she spoke in gentle tones, as if she had a heart of tenderness, a motherly sympathy with the sorrow of her children. There was something in the deep silence of the woods that seemed to say, Peace, be still ! The brooks murmured softly as they flowed between their mossy banks, as if they would not disturb our musings, but " glide into them, and steal away their sharpness ere we were aware." The robins sang in notes not too gay, but that spoke of returning spring after a long dark winter ; and the soft airs that touched the feverish brow seemed to lift gently the grief that rested there, and carry it away on the evening wind, But in the ocean, there was no touch of human feeling, nD sympathy with human woe.

All was cold and pitiless Even on the sea beach "the cruel, crawling foam" comes creeping up to the feet of the child skipping along the sands, as if to snatch him away, while out on the deep the rolling waves " Mock the cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony." Bishop Butler finds in many of the forces of Nature proofs of God's moral government over the world, and even sugges tions of mercy. But none of these does he find in the sea. That speaks only of wrath and terror. Its power is to de stroy. It is a treacherous element. Smooth and smiling i> may be, even when it lures us to destruction. We are sai) ing over it in perfect security, but lei there be a fire or a col lision, and it would swallow us up in an instant, as it has swallowed a thousand wrecks before. Knowing no mercy, cruel as the grave, it sacrifices without pity youth and age, gray hairs and childish innocence and tender womanhood — all alike are engulfed in the devouring sea.

There is not a single tear in the thousand leagues of ocean, nor a sigh in the winds that sweep over it, for all the hearts it breaks or the lives it destroys. The sea, therefore, is not a symbol of di vine mercy. It is the very emblem of tremendous and re morseless power. Indeed, if Nature had no other face but this, we could hardly believe in God, or at least, with gentle attributes ; we could only stand on the shore of existence, and shake with terror at the presence of a being of infinite power, but cold and pitiless as the waves that roll from the Arctic pole. Our Saviour walked on the waves, but left thereon no impress of his blessed feet ; nor can we find there a trace of the love of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ. But we must not yield to musings that grow darker with the gathering night.

Let us go down into the ship, where the lamps are lighted, and there is a sound of voices, to make us forget our loneliness in the midst of the sea. The cabin always presented an animated scene. We had nearly two hundred passengers, who were seated about on the sofas, reading, or playing games, or engaged in conversation. The company was a very pleasant one. At the Captain's table, where we sat, was Mr. Mathew, the late English Minis ter to Brazil, a very intelligent and agreeable gentleman, who had been for seven years at the Court, of Dom Pedro, whom he described as one of the most enlightened monarchs of his time, " half a century in advance of his people," doing every thing that was possible to introduce a better industry and all improvements in the arts from Europe and America. The great matter of pohtical interest now in Brazil is the controversy with the Bishops, where, as in Germany, it is a stubborn fight between the State and the ecclesiastical power.

Two of the Bishops are now in prison for having excommunicated by wholesale all the Freemasons of the country, with out asking the consent of the government to the issue of such a sweeping decree. They are confined in two fortresses on the opposite side of the harbor of Rio Janeiro, where they take their martyrdom very comfortably, their sentence to "hard labor" amounting to having a French cook, and all the luxuries of life, so that they can have a good time, while thev fulminate their censures, " nursing their wrath to keep it warm." At the same table were several young Englishmen, who were not at all like the imaginary Briton abroad, cold and distant and reserved, but very agreeable, and doing everything to make our voyage pleasant. We remember them with a feeling of real friendship. Near us also sat a young New York publisher, Mr. Mead, with his wife, to whom we were drawn by a sort of electi** e affinity, and shall be glad to meet them again on the other side of th« ocean.

Among our passengers was Grace Greenwood, who added much to the general enjoyment by entertaining us in tlie evening with her dramatic recitations from Bret Harte's California Sketches, while her young daughter, who has a very sweet voice, sang charmingly. Like all ships' companies, ours were bent on amusing themselves, although it was sometimes a pursuit of pleasure under difficulties ; as one evening, when a young gentleman and lady sang " What are the wild waves saying ? " each clinging to a post for support, while the performer at the piano had to fall on his knees to keep from being drifted away from his instrument ! But Grace Greenwood is not a mere entertainer of audi ences with her voice, or of the public with her pen. She is not only a very clever writer, but has as much wisdom as wit in her woman's brain.

In our conversations she did not dis cover any extreme opinions, such as are hekr»by some brilliant female writers, but seemed to have a mind well balanced, with a great deal of good common sense as well as womanly feeling, and a brave heart to help her struggling sisters in America, and all over the world. One meets some familiar faces on these steamer decks, and here almost the first man that I ran against was a clergyman whom I knew twenty-five years ago in Connecticut, Rev. James T. Hyde. He is now a Professor in the Congrega tional Theological Seminary at Chicago, and is going abroad for the first time. What a world of good it does these stu dious men, these preachers and scholars, to be thus " transported ! " But here is a scholar and a professor who is not a stranger in Europe, but to the manner born, our own beloved Dr. Schaff, whose passage I had taken with mine (knowing that he had to go abroad this summer), and thus beguiled him into our company.

We shared the same state-room, and never do I desire a more delightful travelling companion on land or sea. Those who know him do not need to be told that he is not only one of our first scholars, but one of the most genial of men. While full of learning, he nevei oppresses you with oracular wisdom; but is just as ready for a pleasant story as for a grave literary or theological dis cussion. I think we hardly realize yet what a service he ha? rendered to our country in establishing a sort of literary and intellectual free trade between the educated and religious mind of America and of Great Britain and Germany. To him more than to any other man is due the great success of the Evangelical Alliance. He is now going abroad on a mission of not less importance — the revision of our present version of the English Bible : a work which has enlisted for some years the combined labors of a great number of the most eminent scholars in England and America.

Finally, as a practical homily and piece of advice to all who are going abroad, let me say, if you would have the fullest enjoyment, take a young person with you — if possi ble, one who is untravelled, so that you can see the world again with fresh eyes. I came away in the deepest depres sion. Nothing has comforted me so much as a hght figure always at my side. Poor child ! The watching, and care, and sorrow that she has had for these many months, had driven the roses from her cheeks; but now they are coming back again. She has never been abroad before. To her literally " all things are new." The sun rises daily on a new world. She enters into everything with the utmost zest. She was a very good sailor, and enjoyed the voyage, and made friends with everybody. Really it brought a thrill of pleasure for the first time into my poor heart to see her delight.

She will be the best of companions in all my wanderings. In such good company, we have passed over the great and wide sea, and now set foot upon the land, thanking Him who has led us safely through the mighty waters. Yesterday morning, after the English service had been read in the saloon, Dr. Schaff gave out the hymn, Nearer, my God, to Thee, and my heart responded fervently to the prayer, that all the experiences of this mortal state, on the sea and on the land— the storms of the ocean and the storms of Use — may seive this one supreme object of existence, to bring us nearer to God. IRELAND — ITS BEAUTY AND ITS SADNESS. 17

Chapter II. Ireland Its Beauty

AN2D ITS SADNESS. The Lakes of Killaenet, May 26th. There is never but one first impression ; all else is second in time and in degree. It is twenty-eight years since I first saw the shores of England and of Ireland, and then they were to me like some celestial counti*}'. It was then, as now, in the blessed spring-time — in the merry month of May : The corn was springing fresh and green, The lark sang loud and high ; and the banks of the Mersey, as I sailed up to Liverpool, were like the golden shores of Paradise. Now I am somewhat of a traveller, and should take these things more quietly, were it not for a pair of young eyes beside me, through which I see things anew, and taste again the sweetness of that earlier time. If we had landed in the moon, my companion could not have been at first more bewildered and delighted with what she saw ; everything waa so queer and quaint, so old and strange — in a word, so unlike all she had ever seen before.

The streets were different, being very narrow, and winding up hill and down dale ; the houses were different, standing close up to the street, without the relief of grass, or lawn, or even of stately ascending 'steps in front ; the thatched cottages and the flowering hedge-rows — all were new. To heighteti the impression of what was so fresh to the eye, the country was in its most beautiful season.' We left New York still looking cold and cheerless from the backward spring ; here the spring had burst into its full glory. The IRELAND — ITS BEAUTY AND ITS SADNESS. ivy mantled every old tower and ruin with the richest green the hawthorn was in blossom, making the hedge-rows, as we whirled along the roads, a mass of white and green, filling the eye with its beauty and the air with its fragrance.

Thus there was an intoxication of the senses, as well as of the imagination; and if the girls (for two others, under tho charge of Prof. Hyde, had joined our party) had leaped from the carriage, and commenced a romp or a dance on tha greensward, we could hardly have been surprised, as an ex nression of their childish joy, and their first greeting as they touched the soil, not of merry England, but of the Emerald Isle. But if this set them off into such ecstasies, what shall be said of their first sight of a ruin ? Of course it was Blarney Castle, which is near Cork, and famous for its Blarney Stone. A lordly castle, indeed, it must have been in the days of its pride, as it still towers up a hundred feet and more, and its walls are eight or ten feet thick : so that it would have lasted for ages, if Cromwell had not knocked some ugly holes through it a little more than two hundred years ago.

But still the tower is beautiful, being covered to the very top with masses of ivy, which in England is the great beautifier of whatever is old, clinging to the mouldering wall, covering up the huge rents and gaps made by cannon balls, and making the most unsightly ruins lovely in their decay. We all climbed to the top, where hangs in air, fastened by iron clamps in its place, the famous Blarney Stone, which is said to im part to whoever kisses it the gift of eloquence, which will make one successful in love and in life. As it was, only one pressed forward to snatch this prize which it held out to our embrace. Dr. Schaff even " poked " the stone disdain fully with his staff, perhaps thinking it would become like Aaron's rod that budded. The lack of enthusiasm, however, may have been owing to the fact that the stone hangs at a dizzy height, and is therefore somewhat difficult of approach ; for ou descending within the castle, where is another Blarney Stone lying on the ground, and within easy reach, I can tes tify that several of the party gave it a hearty smack, not tc catch any mysterious virtue from the stone, bftt the flavor of thousands of fair lips that had kissed it before.

Before leaving this old castle, as we shall have many more tc see hereafter, let me say a word about castles in general. They are well enough as ruins, and certainly, as they are scattered about Ireland and England, they add much to the picturesqueness of the landscapes, and will always possess a romantic interest. But viewed in the sober light of history, they are monuments of an age of barbarism, when the countiy was divided among a hundred chiefs, each of whom had his stronghold, out of which he could sally to attack his less powerful neighbor. Everything in the construction — the huge walls, with nariow slits for windows through which the ar chers could pour arrows, or in later times tbe musketeers could shower balls, on their enemies ; the deep moat surround ing it ; the drawbridge and portcullis — all speak of a time of universal insecurity, when danger was abroad, and every man had to be armed against his fellow.

As a place of habitation, such a fortress was not much better than a prison. The chieftain shut himself in behind massive walls, under huge arches, where the sun could never pene trate, where all was dark and gloomy as a sepulchre. I know a cottage in New England, on the crest of one of the Berk shire Hills, open on every side to light and air, kissed by the rising and the setting sun, in which there is a hundred times more of real comfort than could have been in one of these old castles, where a haughty baron passed his existence in gloomy grandeur, buried in sepulchral gloom. And to what darker purposes were these castles sometimes applied ! Let one go down into the passages underneath, and see the dungeons underground, dark, damp, and cold as the grave, in which prisoners and captives were buried alive.

IRELAND — ITS BEAUTY AND ITS SADNESS. One cannot grope his way into these foul subterranean durv geons without seeling that these old castles are the monuments of savage tyrants; that if these walls could speak. they would tel>many a tale, not of knightly chivalry, but of barbarous cruelty, that would curdle the blood with horror. These things take away somewhat of the charm which Waltei Scott has thrown about these old " gallant knights," who were often no better than robber chiefs ; and I am glad that Cromwell with his cannon battered their strongholds about their ears. Let these relics remain covered with ivy, and picturesque as ruins, but let it never bo forgotten that they are the fallen monuments of an age of barbarism, of terror, and of cruelty. There is one other feature of this country that cannot be omitted from a survey of Ireland — it is the beggars, who are sure to give an American a warm welcome.

They greet him with whines and grimaces and pitiful beseechings, to which he cannot harden his heart. My first salutation at Queens town on Monday morning, on coming out in front of the hotel to take a view of the beautiful bay, was from an old woman in rags, who certainly looked what she described her self to be, " a poor crathur, that had nobody to care for her," and who besought me, " for the love of God, to give her at least the price of a cup of tea ! " Of course I did, when she gave me an Irish blessing : " May the gates of Paradise open to ye, and to all them that loves ye ! " This vision of Paradise seems to be a favorite one with the Irish beggar, and is sometimes coupled with extraordinary images, as when one blesses her benefactor in this overflowing style : "May every hair on your head be a candle to light you to Paradise !

" This quick wit of the Irish serves them better than their poverty in appealing for charity ; and I must confess that I have violated all the rules laid down by charitable societies, f not to give to beggars," for I have filled my pockets with pennies, and given to hordes of ragamuffins, as well as to old women, to hear their answers, which, though largely infused with Irish blarney, have a flavor of native wit. Who could resist such a blessing as this : " May ye ride in a fine carriage, and the mud of your wheels splash the face of your inimies," then with a quick turn, " though I know ye haven't any ! " Yesterday we made au excursion through the Gap of Dun loe, a famous gorge in the mountains around Killarney, and were set upon by the whole fraternity — ragtag and bobtail. At the foot of the pass we left our jaunting car to walk over the mountain, C alone being mounted on a pony.