on the staff of Gen. O. B. Wilcox, afterwards commanded a regiment, was wounded, and carried from the field for dead, and was made brigadiergeneral by brevet, for gallant conduct during the war. He had, at the time of our meeting, as above stated, been for many years a professor in Oberlin College, and was now in Europe seeking mental and physical recuperation.

This accidental meeting of two old army comrades at this remote place was as happy as it was unexpected. We all went on together to Paris, and took adjoining rooms in the same hotel. This was a fine public-house, with a French name, situate in the heart of the city, and within a short distance of the leading objects of interest in the French capital.

We found Paris to be, in many respects, a model city. The streets are paved with asphalt, a material which makes a durable pavement there. The city consumes an immense quantity of water, which is drawn from the river Seine. There are ninety-two miles of water-pipes under the streets, and the main part of the city presents a very cleanly appearance. Fresh water is let into the streets every morning. This forms rapid currents in all the gutters; and the dirt and filth of the city is swept into these running streams, and carried

away.

The public buildings and grounds of Paris have been made exceedingly attractive. There were

SIGHTS IN PARIS.

33

formerly two principal palaces, the Louvre and the Tuileries; but they are now united in one. Here, perhaps, are the greatest art-galleries in the world. The name Tuileries is derived from the fact, that all the tiles (tuiles) used in Paris were formerly manufactured on the ground where this palace stands.

We not only visited these renowned places, but also extended our observations to the Palais Elysée (the city residence of the President of the Republic); to the gardens of the Tuileries; to the river Seine, with its numerous arched bridges; to the Opera House, which cost twenty million dollars; to the Column Vendôme, surmounted by the bronze statue of Napoleon I., and admired the world over; to the Triumphal Arch; and to the extensive parks and boulevards, which are distinguishing features of Paris. In the ornamented parks, we found, on the seventeenth day of April, trees in leaf, and summer-birds gayly singing in their branches. We also noticed horsechestnuts, rhododendrons, and flowering shrubs in full blossom.

But summer, with its burning suns and its epidemics, was advancing upon us; and we were admonished not to let the grass grow under our feet. It was Palestine that we were in pursuit of, and we intended to reach its shores by the first day of May. We therefore left Paris by rail, for Mont-Cenis Tunnel and Rome, on the evening

34

MONT-CENIS TUNNEL.

of the seventeenth day of April. As morning dawned, we had reached the Jura chain of mountains, and the heart of one of the great wineregions of France. There the vineyards not only cover much of the level ground, but they extend also far up the mountains, even to their very tops. We cross the river Rhone, and approach the Alps. We stop at a mountain pass for breakfast. The weather is here damp and chilly, yet we notice in this gorge the winter or leafless magnolia in perfect bloom. We are soon in sight of Mont Cenis; and as the night has been a stormy one, rain descending in the lowlands, and snow and sleet on the mountains, and cleaving to them, all the bold and rugged summits of this Alpine region present a singularly striking appearance.

At the French mouth of the tunnel is a custom-house, where our baggage is inspected. This subterranean passage is eight miles in length. Lights are kept constantly burning in it day and night. We were thirty minutes in going through. In this tunnel we pass out of France and into Italy. On this same line through the Alps, there are fifteen or twenty shorter tunnels. The atmosphere was made extremely cold and disagreeable by the storm on this high elevation, and our introduction to "Italian skies" was attended by no audible acclamations.

The steep sides of the mountains here, wher

CLINGING TO THE STEEPS.

35

ever a patch of soil can be found, are cultivated in a small way to a very great height from the valleys; and the wretched hovels of the peasants are clinging to the steeps where it would seem almost impossible for a human being to stand. How the occupants get to and from their abodes one can hardly imagine. There are seen also shabby, lonely villages clinging to these precipitous mountain sides, like eagles' nests, away up, one and even two thousand feet from the bottom. Women are found here at work in the fields as much as the men; and the whole people, old and young, are evidently in a state of wretched igno

rance and want.

As we descend the mountains, the country becomes better. All day long we travel at a rapid rate in a south-easterly direction. At sunset we reach Turin, a city of two hundred and twentyfive thousand inhabitants, standing on a vast plain. Its ancient walls are mainly destroyed. In the center of a large square is the old palace of the early dukes of Savoy. The climate of Turin is variable, and at times extremely windy and rough. The principal manufactures are silk goods, jewelry, furniture, piano-fortes, and carriages.

At midnight of the second night from Paris, we jump off the train at Genoa, to pay our respects to Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of America, who was born here. At daylight we are look

36

PENINSULA OF ITALY.

ing out on Pisa, a city surrounded by an ancient wall with five gates, and having within its borders the celebrated Leaning Tower, a shaft a hundred and eighty feet high. Here, also, is a bridge with three arches, which is made entirely of white marble, over the river Arno. We arrive at Rome, and take rooms at the Minerva, a hotel conveniently situated near Capitoline Hill and the principal objects of historic interest in the city of the Cæsars.

The peninsula of Italy is nine hundred miles in length. It lies between the glaciers of the Alps on the north, and the fires of Vesuvius and Etna on the south. It projects into the Mediterranean Sea. Its population is twenty-six millions. Its climate, as a whole, is warm and dry; but it has no clearer sun, or softer skies, or balmier atmosphere, than the United States.

Northern Italy is a basin enclosed by the Alps and traversed by the Po. Several rivers descending from the mountains contribute to swell the Po, and cause it to flood the grounds. The surrounding country owes to the slime of this and the other rivers an extraordinary fertility. In that section of Italy known as Tuscany, the landscape has a singularly picturesque character. The towns stand upon high eminences. The fields rise in terraces, in gradual slopes. The vine mingles its foliage with that of the elm and the poplar, the pale olive modifies in every direction the tints,