But in the morning—it was soon after breakfast—a gray bank rose up out of the sea, and the word went round that it was Asia. That was a strange thing for a boy who had been brought up on the prairies of the Middle West—to look across the bow and see Asia coming up out of the sea. It brought back a small, one-room, white district schoolhouse, dropped down on the bleak, level prairie, and geography-class of three, standing in a row and singing to the tune of Old Dan Tucker the rhymes of the continents:
"Asia sixteen millions,
The largest of the five grand divisions."
It was not much of a rhyme, nor much of a tune, but there was a swing in the way we did it which fixed those facts for life. They came back now, and I had to get hold of myself a little to realize that this was the same Asia with all those square miles—the land of the Arabian Nights, of the apostles and the patriarchs—the wonderful country I had one day hoped to see. And presently we were off the Plains of Troy, passing near where the ships of the Greeks lay anchored, all of which seemed very wonderful, too, I thought. We were in the Dardanelles, then, following the path of those first Argonauts who set sail with Jason, and of that later band who set out in the Quaker City, forty-two years ago. No lack of history and tradition and old association here.
But how one's information does go to seed; all of us knew something, but none of us knew much. Not one of us knew positively whether the Hellespont was the same as the Dardanelles or as the Bosporus, and when, with the help of the guide-book, we decided that it was the former, we fell into other luminous debates as to where Leander swam it when he was courting Hero and where Xerxes built his bridge. The captain said that both these things took place at Abydos, which he pointed out to us, and then we were in trouble right away again as to whether this was the Abydos of Lord Byron's poem, or merely another town by the same name. At all events it was not much of a place.
On the whole, the shores of the Dardanelles are mostly barren and uninteresting, with small towns here and there and fortifications. At one place some men came out in a boat and went through the formality of letting us enter the country. It did not seem much of a permission; I could have given it myself. But I suppose we had to have theirs; otherwise they might have reached us with some kind of a gun.
We entered the Sea of Marmora, passed a barren island or two; then the shores fell back beyond the horizon, and most of us put in the rest of the day pretending to read up on Constantinople. It was dark when we dropped anchor in the mouth of the Bosporus, and we were at dinner—a gala dinner, after which we danced. A third of the way around the world to the westward, in a country called America, a new President would be inaugurated to-morrow, and in the quiet dusk of our anchorage, with the scattered lights of Asia blinking across from one side and a shadowy, mysterious grove and a fairy-lighted city on the other, we celebrated that great occasion in the West and our arrival at the foremost mart of the East by dancing before Stamboul.
That should have ended our day, but when we were about to break up, a boat-load or two of uniformed officials with distinctly Oriental faces and fezzes came aboard and opened business in the after cabin, going through our passports. Then for an hour or so there was most extraordinary medley of confused tongues. We had all our own kinds going at once and several varieties of Constantinoplese besides. And what an amazing performance it was, altogether—something not to be equalled anywhere else on the earth, I imagine, unless in Russia—a sufficient commentary on the progress and enlightenment of these two laggard nations.
ONE'S AGE, STATED ON OATH, GOES WITH A PASSPORT