Sicily showed itself for a few hours while the boat continued on its way to Brindisi; and as that day happened to be the 4th of March, the captain of the Sutlej was asked to make a calculation for which there will be no further need for four years to come. This calculation showed at what point in the Mediterranean ocean the Sutlej would be when a President was being inaugurated in Washington, and at the proper time the passengers were invited to the cabin, and the fact that a government was changing into the hands of one who could best take care of it was impressed upon them in different ways. And later, after dinner, the captain of the Sutlej made a speech, and said things about the important event (which he insisted on calling an election) which was then taking place in America, and the English cheered and drank the new President's health, and the two Americans on board, who fortunately were both good Democrats, felt not so far from home as before.
You must touch at Brindisi, which is situated on the heel of the boot of Italy, if you wish to go a part of the way by land from the East to London or from London to the East. And as many people prefer travelling forty-eight hours across the Continent to rounding Gibraltar, one hears often of Brindisi, and pictures it as a shipping port of the importance of Liverpool or Marseilles. Instead of which it is as desolate as a summer resort in midwinter, and is like that throughout the year. There was a long, broad stone wharf, and tall stucco houses behind, and banks of coal which suggested the rear approach to Long Island City, and the soft blue Italian skies of which we had read were steely blue, and most of us wore overcoats. We lay bound fast to the wharf, with a plank thrown from the boat's side to the quay, for the day, and we had free permission to learn to walk on streets again for full twenty-four hours; but after facing the wind, and dodging guides who had nothing to show, we came back by preference to the clean deck and the steamer-chair. Desperate-looking Italian soldiers with feathers in their hats, and custom-house officers, and gendarmes paraded up and down the quay for our delectation, and a wicked little boy stood on the pier-head and sang "Ta-ra-ra-boom-chi-ay," pointedly varying this knowledge of our several nationalities by crying: "I say, buy box matches. Get out." This show of learning caused him to be regarded by his fellows with much envy, and they watched us to see how far we were impressed.
PILLAR OF CÆSAR AT BRINDISI
There are two things which need no newspaper advertising and which recognize no geographical lines; one is a pretty face and the other is a good song. I have seen photographs for sale of Isabelle Irving and Lillian Russell in as different localities as Santiago in Cuba, and Rotterdam, and I saw a play-bill in San Antonio, Texas, upon which the Countess Dudley and the Duchess of Leinster were reproduced under the names of the Walsh Sisters. A good song will travel as far, changing its name, too, perhaps, and its words, but keeping the same melody that has pleased people in a different part of the world. When the moon came out at Brindisi and hid the heaps of coal, and showed only the white houses and the pillar of Cæsar, a party of young men with guitars and mandolins gathered under the bow and sang a song called "Oh, Caroline," which I had last heard Francis Wilson sing as a part of the score of "The Lion-tamer," to very different words. As the scene of "The Lion-tamer" is laid in Sicily, the song was more or less in place; but the contrast between the dark-browed Italian and Mr. Wilson's genial countenance which the song brought back was striking. And on the night after we had left Brindisi, when the crew gave a concert, one of them sang "Oh, promise me," and some one asked if the song had yet reached America. I did not undeceive him, but said it had.
After Brindisi the hands of the clock go back a few thousand years, and we see Cethdonia, where Ulysses owned much property, and Crete, from whence St. Paul set sail, with its long range of mountains covered with snow, and then we come back to the present near the island of Zante, where the earthquake moved a month ago and swallowed up the homes of the people.
The Sutlej had been going out of her course all of the fourth day in order to dodge possible islands thrown up by the earthquake, and she was late. That night, as she steamed forward at her best speed, the level oily sea fell back from her bows with a steady ripple as she cut it in two and turned it back out of the way. A light on the horizon, like a policeman's lantern, which changed to the burnt-out end of a match and back again to a bull's-eye, told us that beyond the light lay the level sands of Egypt, almost as far-reaching and monotonous as the sea that touched its shore.
