An Oriental Outing; Being a Narrative of a Cruise Along the Mediterranean and of Visits to Historic Cities (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... An Oriental Outing. OUTWARD BOUND. i. I Begin this letter 390 i0' north latitude, and 3i0 west longitude. Where it will end, I don't know, and how it will fare, I can't say; for near my table, where I am writing, there are eleven young people playing cards, and all talking at once in German and English; so my thoughts, that are rather languishing from seasickness, are seriously disturbed by the clatter of the play. Our steamer left New York on February ist, at 2.30 P. M.--a cold, dismal day. It was an interesting moment, and yet a time of the severest solitude. Hundreds and hundreds of people came down to bid their friends good-bye, and immense bouquets were borne aboard as last tokens of love to those who were about to sail out on the broad Atlantic. There was just a little shadow over me in my loneliness, until the band struck up "The Star-spangled Banner," when the clouds lifted, and threw a gleam of sunshine across my fate, to be darkened a few moments after, when the band changed its patriotic air into "Home, Sweet Home," and then I wished I was there, and I looked out toward the dark ocean with a little shudder. Promptly at the minute of departure the Bismarck swung from the wharf and backed into the bay. There was a flutter from a thousand handkerchiefs on the dock, and a similar salute from three hundred aboard. I waved mine, too; but it was over the heads of the crowd at friends on the banks of the Ohio River, far away. There was more or less weeping; but tears are evanescent, and all eyes were dried as the steamer proudly plowed down the bay. Land was fading away as darkness came. I paced the deck a long time, watching the creamy waves made by the gliding boat, and off afar the phosphorescent white-caps dancing on the bosom of...