Go to dark Gethsemane.
We lingered under the garden’s immemorial olives and cedars. The Franciscan who was our guide gave her a handful of flowers,—the flowers I found the other day in the envelope marked “Gethsemane.”
From Jaffa we sailed for Beirut, skirting the storied African coast. A fellow passenger, an old sea captain, electrified us one morning by exclaiming, as carelessly as he might have said, “Yonder’s Nantucket Light”, “Tyre’s thereabouts—place where the purple dye came from—not much to see there now!”
Of Cyprus, I remember only the thrill of the great names,—Paphos, birthplace and shrine of Aphrodite, and Salamis.
The steamer made some stay at Smyrna, where we were entertained by Christy Evangelides, who could not do enough for my mother. As a boy he had escaped from a Turkish massacre and been carried to New York on an American vessel. Here my grandfather Ward had befriended him.
Christy was a vigorous intelligent man who seemed to hold a leading position in Smyrna. While calling at his house we were offered a delicious sweetmeat flavored with rose leaves, served in a crystal dish. You took a spoonful; then a glass of water was handed you. If that ambrosial conserve had a fault, it was a little oversweet; this made the water doubly welcome. In speaking of Smyrna’s claim to fame Christy said, “You doubtless know that this island was the birthplace of Homer?”
I thought of the old English round we used to sing:
Seven great towns of Greece, ’tis said,
Claimed Homer’s birth when he was dead,
Through which, alive, he begged his bread.
At Jerusalem the grave of Adam had been pointed out to us; after that nothing surprised me. My mother however confirmed Christy’s statement.
Some of the saloon passengers were interested in a forlorn family in the steerage. The mother, an Egyptian, was very ill, and the children needed looking after. An Englishwoman who had lived long in Cairo gave this warning: