And manners, climates, councils, governments,
I have seen few things that thrilled me more than my first view of this famous waterway. For, notwithstanding the fact that I had spent my early boyhood within a few hundred miles of the Mississippi, I was familiar with the name of the Euphrates before I had heard of that of our great “Father of Waters.” And when, after nearly three score years of waiting, I at length found myself actually walking along the sandy marge of this stately river—a river that my earliest reading told me had its source in Paradise—and felt personal contact with it, it was in very truth an event in my life. It was, indeed, like meeting again a favorite friend of boyhood days. The emotions which I then experienced and the memories that were evoked have been expressed in part in the beautiful apostrophe of the poet Michel:
All hail, Euphrates! stream of hoary time,
Fair as majestic, sacred as sublime!
What thoughts of earth’s young morning dost thou bring!
What hallowed memories to thy bright waves cling!—
The bowers are crushed where Eve in beauty shone,
Ages have whelmed, beneath their ruthless tide,
Assyria’s glory and Chaldæa’s pride:
But thou, exhaustless river! rollest still,