Cities of the Dawn Naples - Athens - Pompeii - Constantinople - Smyrna - Jaffa - Jerusalem - Alexandria - Cairo - Marseilles - Avignon - Lyons - Dijon

The three principal sights in Jerusalem are the Mosque of Omar, now standing on the site of Solomon’s Temple, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Muristan, which is the co...

Covered with dust, parched with thirst, exhausted with hunger, burnt up with heat, I am landed at the charming Hôtel du Nil, in the gardens of which, filled up with American roc...

One of the most interesting evenings I spent in Jerusalem was in listening to a lecture by Dr. Wheeler, of the English Hospital in the city, who is now seeking to build a hospit...

I am in Constantinople, founded 658 B.C. by Byza, King of Megara, after whom it was called Byzantium. After some hundreds of years it fell into the hands of the Romans, who, lik...

What memories crowd on me as I step into the tug which is to take me and the rest of us, in a confused mass, stowed away amidst the luggage, to the Custom House at Marseilles, a...

For the first time in my life, I realize the fact that the Mediterranean is a lake—calm and blue as the eyes we love. What astonishes me is the absence of life in these waters....

In one of the first books which used to be placed in the hands of young people when I was a lad—Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs’—we get rather an unpleasant idea of Lyons. ‘There,’ write...

We left Jaffa on the Monday, and in twenty-four hours after were landed at Alexandria. Alexandria is not a desirable place to land at; travellers have to trust generally to nati...

As possibly some of my readers may wish for a further study of some of the cities and places to which I have referred, I have added a few books of reference which they may consu...

It is needless to write that no one can go to Naples without paying a visit to Pompeii, if he would get a true idea of a Roman city, with its streets, and shops, and baths, and...

There are two things in Egypt which amply repay the traveller for his trouble. One is the museum at Gizeh, and the other the pyramids, especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I...

Once more I am in Naples, with its houses rising one over another, in front of me, and Vesuvius looking down on me, and across the loveliest bay the world has yet seen. There is...

Remember, as the great Dr. Johnson remarks, how life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance wit...

As an illustration of what a French provincial town is in the way of hotels, I would take Dijon, where I stopped a night on my way from Lyons to Paris. From Marseilles to Dijon...

At length I gaze on the Nile—that marvellous river, the sources of which, though many have tried to find them, have only been discovered in our day. The history of Egypt is the...

Leaving Marseilles, the place at which I tarried next was Avignon, where I had comfortable and cheap quarters at the Hôtel Grillon. It was there I saw the only drunken man that...

The one spot in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem which one must visit is Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Christ, the music of whose voice and the lustre of whose life have bright...

I left off my last letter opposite Corsica. Since then—and this is the charm of coming to Naples in the _Midnight Sun_—we have passed quite a cluster of isles more or less renow...

I write now from one of the most ancient cities in the world. There is a wonderful lot of ancient history in these parts. The mind quite staggers under the ever-accumulating loa...

To leave London one day and to arrive in Marseilles the next would have been deemed impossible—the dream of a madman—in the age in which I was born, when steamships and railways...

You see nothing of Jerusalem till you get inside the city, and to enjoy a visit requires a greater enthusiasm than any to which I can lay claim. We were safely landed at Jaffa,...