From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

Berlin to Bagdad! How these words, during the past few years, have stirred the chancelleries of Europe and how they have echoed and reëchoed throughout the civilized world! How...

of Babylon and its marvelous hanging gardens; of Nineveh and its magnificent temples and palaces; of the Tigris and the Euphrates whose waters were made to irrigate the vast and...

Our entrance into the Black Sea was through the well-jettied Sulina Canal--a canal which, for a great part of its length, passes through a reed-covered lowland which is so near...

_The City of the Constantines,_ _The rising city of the billow-side,_ _The City of the Cross--great ocean’s bride,_ _Crowned with her birth she sprung long ages past,_ _And stil...

_Now let_ _Us fly to Asia’s cities of renown!_ _Already through each nerve a flutter runs_ _Of eager hope, that longs to be away;_ _Already ’neath the light of other suns_ _My f...

_Have Time’s stern scythe, man’s rage and flood and fire_ _Left naught for curious pilgrims to admire?_ _A few poor footsteps may now cross the shrine,_ _Cell, long arcade, high...

No part of Asia Minor possesses greater interest for the traveler of a studious turn than that which borders the Anatolian Railroads. And this, as the historian well knows, is s...

_In its political and military, not to speak of its commercial, consequences, the securing by Germany of the Bagdad Railway is perhaps the most important event which has occurre...

Aside from the interest which attaches to it as the north-western terminus of the Bagdad Railway, Konia, the ancient Iconium, like so many other places in Anatolia, is extremely...

_Domes, minarets, their spiry heads that rear,_ _Mocking with gaudy hues the ruins near;_ _Dim crumbling colonnades and marble walls,_ _Rich columns, broken statutes, roofless h...

Properly to appreciate Mohammed we must discard our religious and national prejudices and see in his work only what he has put in it, independently of the consequences which thi...

_Beautiful old stories,_ _Tales of angels, fairy legends,_ _Stilly histories of martyrs,_ _Festal songs and words of wisdom;_ _Hyperboles, most quaint it may be,_ _Yet replete w...

After a delightful but an all-too-short sojourn in Aleppo, made doubly delightful by our amiable Franciscan hosts and by their charming and hospitable friends whose number here,...

Our arrival at Mosul was to us a cause of gratification for many reasons. Not the least of these was the very cordial reception tendered us by the good Sons of St. Dominic whose...

_Here thou behold’st_ _Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,_ _Araxes and the Caspian Lake; thence on_ _As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,_ _And oft beyond; to south the...

_When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free_ _In the silken sail of infancy,_ _The tide of time flow’d back with me,_ _The forward-flowing tide of time;_ _And many a sheeny summ...

_Romantic Bagdad! name to childhood dear,_ _Awaking terror’s thrill and pity’s tear;_ _For there the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,_ _And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid kn...

And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowle...

_A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon_ _Spreads o’er the blasted plain;_ _The wandering Arab never sets his tent_ _Within her walls; the shepherd eyes afar_ _Her evil towers, and devio...