Deign to bless our dear Country, Our Homes, our Priests, our Bishops; And may Canadians ever be Faithful Servants of Jesus and Mary! Adorable Heart, Always conserve To the Land of the Maple The Faith of our Fathers!
* * *
We reached Geneva last night and are leaving to-morrow morning for Berne. Geneva is a beautiful city, situated at the head of the lake of the same name. The atmosphere is wonderfully clear here to-day and the sun shines out of a cloudless sky. Afar off--though it seems not far, it must be some score of miles away--the snowy summit of Mont Blanc is distinctly visible. All around are Alpine peaks. The city is full of historic interest. Here Calvin preached his gloomy creed and ruled with an iron rod. Here, too, the very opposite of Calvin in every way, that sweetest and most lovable of Saints, Francis of Sales, wielded episcopal authority over a devoted flock. His spirit seems to breathe in the peace and calm of this June day. One can even fancy that one hears the accents of his gentle voice calling his sheep away from earthly pastures to heavenly ones, guiding them ever onward to the Great Shepherd of the sheep, in the fold upon the everlasting hills.
* * *
LUCERNE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27.
The parts of Switzerland that are capable of cultivation seem to be even more fertile than the parts of France that we have passed through. Both the hay and grain crops are heavier, at least this year, and the vine thrives marvellously on the hillsides of this beautiful and romantic land. For beautiful it is and romantic, this land of bright-blue skies, and snow-capped mountains, and leaping cataracts, and sylvan glades, and smiling valleys.
We spent Sunday at Geneva, and stayed two or three hours at Berne Monday on our way to Interlaken. Berne is the national capital. Its most notable buildings are the Federal House of Parliament and the Lutheran Cathedral. The latter dates from the beginning of the 15th century, and to this day bears about it tokens of the Faith that first set it up. Berne is the German word for "bear." The city takes its name "de bellua caesa," as an old monument bears witness, from a bear having been slain on the site where it stands. Thence the bear is the emblem and heraldic decoration of the Swiss capital. You can't turn in any direction without running across the figure of a bear. The poor beast is drawn in every conceivable shape and tortured into every conceivable attitude. One is reminded of the fable of the Lion and the Man, as told by Newman. There are bears couchant, bears passant, and bears regardant. There are old bears and young bears, big bears and little bears, bears climbing trees, bears standing on their hind legs, bears hugging each other, and bears making faces at each other. And to crown all, the city maintains four huge live bears and several young ones in an enclosure about twelve feet below the level of the ground. They are shown to every visitor who crosses the stone bridge that spans the Aar river, on the banks of which Berne stands.
Interlaken, as the name implies, is situated between two lakes. It is an ideal summer resort, a very paradise of tourists. It is hemmed in by mountains on every side. On the east, Jungfrau lifts her snowy summit to the skies. Jungfrau (pronounced yungfrau) is German for virgin. And a tall virgin she is, this Maiden of the Snows, ever holding her head erect some 13,000 feet above the level of the sea. She always wears her white mantle, and for apron a great glacier. On the evening of our arrival she had on a cap of cloud, and some time during the night further shrouded herself in a veil of mist. Nor would she lift it as we went away, eager though we were to catch a glimpse of her morning face.
Between Interlaken and Lucerne the scenery is uninterruptedly grand. Mountain, lake, and Alpine river quickly succeed one another, but without sameness. The most remarkable feature of this route is the over-mountain railway. The train climbs an Alpine hill from 1,200 to 1,500 feet in height, and makes its way down on the other side. Our train was divided into three sections, each section of which was pulled by a powerful locomotive. The wheels revolve on cogs set in the rails. At one time the train is on the very edge of a precipice, with a sheer descent of several hundred feet; at another, an overhanging cliff threatens to fall down on top of it and smash it into atoms. Now it seems to be on the verge of dropping into a lake hundreds of feet below; the next moment the dense Alpine forests hides even the heavens from one's view. It is a thrilling experience, and one feels a sense of relief once it is fairly over.
* * *
ROME, JULY 6TH, 1900.
It is more than a week since last I put pen to paper. We were then at Lucerne, amid the eternal hills. We are now in the Eternal City. Into this short space much has been crowded--too much even to touch on here or give in barest outline. There is the sublime scenery of the Alpine Passes between Lucerne and Como, with the passage through the great tunnel at St. Gothard's. There is Milan with its marvellous Duomo, "a dream in marble," as some prose poet has pictured it. There is the vast plain of Lombardy, stretching for miles and miles from the foot of the Alps to the Mediterranean, the garden of Italy, as Italy is the garden of Europe. Then there is Venice, Queen of the Adriatic, the city of doges and of gondolas. The doges are dead; we visited the church where monuments in marble and in bronze enshrine their ashes and perpetuate all that now remains of their former greatness--a fugitive and fitful memory. The gondolas are still there, with their graceful, swan-like shape and movement--just such as they were in the days when the Republic of Venice was mistress of the seas. There, again, is Padua, with its shrine of St. Anthony, whose incorrupt tongue still witnesses to the power with which this "trumpet of the Gospel" heralded Christ and Him crucified. There, too, is Loreto, with its Holy House, where the Word was made Flesh--a most gracious shrine. Lastly, as we hasten Romeward, midway between Ancona and Rome, amid the Umbrian hills, yet another shrine draws us to itself--Assisi, where live the memories of St. Francis and the spirit of St. Francis--live, too, as fresh and fragrant as are the blood-bedewed roses that bloom on thornless bushes in his garden, where he fought the good fight against temptation and won for the men of all time the Pardon of the Portiuncula.
Those of us who spent Wednesday in Assisi did not reach Rome until a late hour that night. Imagine our surprise and almost consternation when we were told that all the pilgrims were to be received in audience by the Holy Father at eleven the next (yesterday) morning. We had counted on being at least a day or two in Rome before the audience took place, and we were not ready. We ran about for two or three hours in the morning, buying medals, etc., to be blessed--I with no little difficulty, getting English gold for the cheques containing the Peter Pence offering of our diocese, some two thousand one hundred and fifty francs. By eleven o'clock we are at the Vatican, and half an hour afterwards Pope Leo enters the Sala Clementina, borne on a chair, amid the 'evivas' of the assembled pilgrims. There are two pilgrimages, the Brazilian, ranged along one side of the great hall, and the Canadian along the other. First the Pope receives the Brazilians, then the Canadians. He is carried in his chair right around the hall, in front of the pilgrims who line the sides. To each he gives his hand to kiss; to each his blessing and some gracious token of tenderness--a word, a smile; to all, at the close, the Apostolic Benediction. Pope Leo is of course changed since I saw him last, sixteen years ago; the white hair is scantier and whiter still, the lines on the face are deeper, the hands are more tremulous, the voice has lost its resonance. But the light of the coal black eye is not dimmed, there is more of pathos in the voice, and the whole face has melted into tenderness. There has come into it a gentler and more winning look, which one likens to the mellowness of ripe fruit when it is ready to drop from the tree. This fruit is surely meet to be gathered, one says to oneself, yet none but the Master's hand may pluck it from the stem.
The scene in the Sala Clementina, at the close of the audience, as the aged Pontiff blessed the pilgrims, I will not attempt to describe. I shall never forget it, and no one who was there ever can forget it. When the Pope raised himself on his chair and stretched out his hand to give the Apostolic Benediction, there was a stillness as of death throughout the vast hall--a stillness soon broken by sobs, for tears filled the eyes of all that were there, and many wept aloud. The first words were spoken in distinct though somewhat low tones, but as the last words, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, were being uttered the Holy Father himself broke down completely. The voice grew husky with emotion, the eyes closed, and great tears rolled down the aged cheeks. Leo XIII felt that he was blessing for the last time these faithful children of his from the two Americas, and we felt that never in this life should we look upon his face again. I must close abruptly, without as much as one word about Rome itself- -Rome to which I have come, not merely as a pilgrim from afar to a holy place of pilgrimage, but as a son comes to his mother after long years of separation. For Rome is to me the mother of my soul.
* * *
GENOA, FRIDAY, JULY 13.
We left Rome Tuesday at 2 p.m., after a stay of six days, which was all too short. For one could spend months and months in Rome and still not see a tithe of what is worth seeing, or even begin to be weary of a place so rich in all that sages have thought and poets have dreamed of and artists have wrought and martyrs have bled for and saints have loved. We leave Rome with regret; feeling as all must feel in whom there is a spark of Divine Faith, that it is the City of the Soul, to which, in the words of the poet, "the exile of the heart" must forever turn.
The run from Rome to Florence is made in five or six hours. Florence, the city of flowers, is built on both banks of the Arno. It is a beautiful city much frequented by tourists. It is the birthplace of many of Italy's greatest sons, of Dante, of Michael Angelo, of Galileo. Here Savonarola lived and preached and wielded an influence more potent than that of any civil ruler. We saw, in one of the palaces of the Medici, the chapel where he spoke his last words to his brother monks, just before he was led out to be burnt at the stake in the Piazza of the Signoria, hard by. Here, too, first saw the light of day one who was the opposite of Savonarola in many ways, the sweet and gentle Philip Neri. Rome, the city of his adoption, of which he became the second Apostle, is still filled with the fragrance of his saintly life.
From Florence we come by rail to Pisa, and thence the same day to Genoa. From Spezia to the latter city, the railway, skirting the shores of the Mediterranean, is one series of tunnels. In the intervals between tunnels we catch glimpses of as beautiful and picturesque scenery as one could wish to gaze upon--a background of hills, rising in many places abruptly to a great height, sloping vineyards, groves of olive, clusters of fruit trees, and, in front, the waters of the Mediterranean, clear as crystal and mirroring in their depths the fleecy summer clouds that float in the blue above. Over all, like a great dome over Nature's own Cathedral, is the sky of Italy.
"Genoa la Superba"--Genoa the Superb--the Genoese call this city by the rippling Mediterranean, and well they may. It is, indeed, superb. In its marble palaces could be entertained to-day, in princely fashion, all the princes of the earth. It is the richest city of the peninsula, the great mart of the Mediterranean, the Liverpool of Italy. From the harbour, where float the flags of all nations, the city resembles a vast amphitheatre, tier upon tier of tall buildings rising one above another. Even the urchins in the street are proud of this queenly city. In the higher part of the town, away up among the hills, near the marvellous Campo Santo, a group of them stood talking rapidly, and to me unintelligibly, in their own Genoese dialect, as we passed by. "Che linguaggio parlate voi altri?" I asked somewhat bluntly. "Noi," says one of the number, with a sweep of the hand which took in the other members of the group, and then pointing proudly with his finger to his breast, "Noi siamo Genovesi--We are natives of Genoa."
That Campo Santo, by the same token, is one of the wonders of the world. Truly the dead of Genoa dwell in marble halls, and this city of the dead is a miracle in marble. Every monument is a work of art. The pose of that figure, how graceful and natural! Those faces in marble and bronze, how life-like are they! The dead seem to live in them again, and to look down at you with their solemn eyes from the other world.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold Those niched shapes of noble mould A princely people's awful princes, The grave, severe Genoese of old. --Tennyson, "The Daisy."
Quieti et Memoriae--you meet it everywhere, this terse and beautiful epigraph. Recalling the memory of some dear departed one, it breathes a prayer for that rest after which the human heart ever hungers here below--that rest which we look for "where beyond these voices there is peace."
For full nine hundred years, from 900 to 1,800, Genoa maintained herself an independent Republic. Already six centuries had rolled over this Old World Republic when the boldest of her sailors embarked at Palos on his voyage of discovery. "Were it not for him we might all of us to-day be--Indians," is the curious thought that comes to one of the pilgrims as he gazes on the massive monument, near the railway station, which bears the legend in huge letters:
A CHRISOFORO COLOMBO LA PATRIA
Ah, those might-have-beens of an unborn past! It is bootless to speculate upon them.
LOURDES, JULY 19, 1900.
"Lourdes is a small town in the diocese of Tarbes, Hautes Pyrenees, picturesquely situated on the right bank of the river Gave." I quote the words from a booklet which purports to be "A Short Account of the Apparitions and Miracles at Lourdes." We arrived here from Toulouse about five o'clock on the afternoon of the day before yesterday. It had been a very hot day in the cars, but all covered with sweat and dust as we were we went straight in procession to the Grotto of Our Lady, without waiting to go to our hotel. There, on our knees before the statue, which smiles down sweetly upon us, as did erstwhile the Virgin Mother for whom it stands, upon the simple peasant girl of the Pyrenees, we recite the Rosary and sing the Magnificat. All about us throngs are kneeling in prayer, and there are signs of a subdued excitement, for just five minutes before our arrival a young girl who had suffered severe injuries by a fall three years ago, and was carried thither in her little carriage, a few hours before, was seen to rise to her feet and walk. But neither before nor after the cure did she report at the Bureau des Constatations Medicales.
The words that I have quoted at the head of this page were written twenty-four years ago by an English priest who visited the shrine. Were he now writing he would no longer say that Lourdes is a small town. The old town of Lourdes is, indeed, small, just a bit of a village in the Pyrenees. But the new Lourdes that has sprung up as if by magic on the banks of the Gave, over against the famous Grotto, has pretensions to rank as a city. It has its banks, its public buildings, its electric cars, rows upon rows of stores, though the wares are almost wholly of a devotional character, hotels and boarding houses without number, and a population of about ten thousand souls. And yet twenty-six years ago, just two years before our English priest wrote his account, there was not, as an old inhabitant told us, a stone upon a stone of the modern, and, for the most part, handsome buildings that one sees to-day.
Nature has lavished her charms on this favoured spot. Nothing is wanting of all that can please the eye or soothe and rest the mind in natural scenery. Lofty hills in front and in the rear, some bare and bald, others clothed with forest to their very tops; in the background, the snow-clad peaks and spurs of the Pyrenees; at your feet a narrow valley, studded with stately trees and carpeted with green-sward; and ever in your ears, though the eye wearied with gazing, should seek repose, the rushing waters of the Gave. Surely a fitting entourage for this most gracious of all our Lady's shrines!
The waters of the Gave, how swiftly and noisily they flow, flinging themselves passionately upon the rude rocks that would stay their onward course! The murmur of the Gave has been in my ears from a boy, for I seemed to hear the rushing of its waters when in boyhood's days I lingered over the pages of Henri Lasserre's fascinating story of the wonders of Lourdes. And to-day as I sit on the bank and gaze down upon the swift stream that flings itself into the Adour to mingle finally with the waters of the mighty Atlantic, the Gave of my boyish dreams is a reality. It is something more. It is an emblem at once and a sermon--an emblem of the surging multitude of pilgrims which ever keeps streaming to the Grotto of our Lady, flowing hither from the ends of the earth; a sermon on the true purpose of life. See how this eager mountain stream, like a thing of life, runs joyously to its rest in the bosom of the great ocean! Not less surely was it meant by Nature to find there its repose than we are meant by the Author of Nature to find our repose in Him. Yet we linger by the way and loiter, while the Gave leaps onward, oh, how swiftly and how surely! to its goal and the home of its rest.
But the Gave has not always been at this point the deep, narrow, noisy stream that it is to-day. Once it roamed at will over its rocky bed, making for itself a wider and more spacious pathway. Now stout stone walls fence it in and confine it to a narrow channel, and it frets and foams as does the wild beast of the forest when imprisoned behind iron bars. In these hot July days, too, the Gave runs deeper and swifter, fed by the melting snows of the Pyrenees. But on that February day, forty-two years ago, it was a feeble and mild-mannered stream. Bernadette and her two little companions crossed the main stream by the stone bridge. But a narrow side channel still separated them from the Grotto in the rocks of Massabielle, where was plenty of the drift wood they were in search of. Stooping down slowly to pull off her shoes and stockings with a view of wading this stream, Bernadette heard a noise as of a sudden gust of wind. "It was a calm grey day, and not a twig of the poplars was stirring, yet she felt certain that she had heard the rush of air. She stooped down again, and again the mysterious current startled her. This time the child looked up towards the niche-shaped cave. To her amazement a clear bright light issued from the aperture, in the midst of which stood a woman more wondrously beautiful than any one Bernadette had ever seen, or could have imagined. She was clad in white, with a long white veil falling over her shoulders; a blue scarf encircled her waist and reached to her knees, and upon either bare foot was a gold-coloured rose." I am quoting from my little book. But the story has been often told and is trite now, though it can never be commonplace.
The number of pilgrims who visit Lourdes yearly is estimated at two hundred and fifty thousand. They come from every country under the sun. The two ends of America are wide enough asunder, yet the fact of our being from the same continent is a real bond between ourselves and our fellow-pilgrims from Brazil, whom we meet here at the shrine of our Lady as we met them at Paray le Monial and again in the audience chamber of the Vatican.
* * *
LOURDES, SATURDAY, JULY 21.
Every day since our coming here has been for us a day of prayer, and, at the same time, a day of rest--rest for body and for soul. There is something in the very atmosphere of Lourdes which inspires devotion and invites repose. Every morning the pilgrims assist at Mass in the Grotto and many receive Holy Communion. We all of us take our places, too, in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and at night, in the torch-light procession. This morning at ten o'clock we had Solemn High Mass in the Grotto, with a Canadian as celebrant, Canadians as ministers at the altar, and Canadians as singers. The service was, of course, in the open air, and very solemn and impressive it was. While we joined in the chant of the Mass, the wind in the trees around about us seemed to sing an accompaniment, and the hoarse-sounding Gave lent its deep bass voice as it sped on its way to the ocean.
To-morrow at eleven o'clock we bid adieu to Lourdes. With Lourdes our pilgrimage ends. At Paris, where we are due Monday evening, our pilgrim party breaks up. Some will stay there for a season, others will sail from Liverpool on the following Thursday, and yet others will visit parts of Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, or of France itself, before turning their steps homeward. Of this number is the present writer. But here at Lourdes, as I have said, our pilgrimage ends. And so from Lourdes, from this sweet shrine of Our Lady by the sounding waters of the Gave, let me send after its fellows this last leaf from
THE DIARY OF A PILGRIM.
JOTTINGS OF A TRIP IN SCOTLAND.
Leaving Liverpool with its din and smoke behind, we begin our journey by rail, through the northwestern part of England toward the Scottish border. It is near the end of July, and the weather, for England, is hot. But coming as we do direct from the stifling heat of Paris, we find it cool by comparison. We are travelling by fast express, and can catch but passing glimpses of the towns and hamlets, the broad farms and comfortable homesteads, of Old England. Now we are dashing through one of the many manufacturing towns with which the land is studded. There are long rows of red brick houses, with here and there a huge chimney belching forth black smoke. The next moment we are once more in the open country. On either hand as far as the eye can reach, are great stretches of farmland and green pastures where cattle are grazing. The grain is ripening in the fields, and ever and anon there comes, through the open window of the car, the sweet savour of new-mown hay. As we go further north the country grows more rugged. Dark ravines open at our feet, and shaggy hills frown down upon us. By three o'clock we have passed Carlisle, once the great stronghold of England against the fierce incursions of its warlike neighbour to the north. Soon after we cross the border and find ourselves on Scottish soil. It is the land of our fathers--
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood,--
a land of stirring memories and teeming with romance. It is not without emotion, therefore, that we enter it for the first time. Nor does the dense Scotch mist into which we run before reaching Edinburgh damp our enthusiasm in the least--though we should not be able to say as much for our persons were we exposed to it but for a moment.
We spend the Sunday in Edinburgh. That droll Frenchman who writes under the pen-name of Max O'Rell, defines a Scotchman as one who keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands on! Well, at any rate he keeps the Sabbath, and that is more than many a Frenchman does. For the people of Edinburgh the Sunday is still emphatically a day of rest. To a Protestant gentleman from Toronto who had just come from Paris himself and put up at the same hotel with us, we remark upon the contrast between the Parisian Sunday and the solemn quiet of the Scotch Sabbath. "Quite so," he says, "but you should have been here yesterday while the Labor Parade was passing through the streets. You would have seen one after another of the men dropping out of the procession in a state of beastly intoxication. In all the time that I was in Paris I saw no single instance of such drunkenness." He had come away from Paris greatly edified, and was leaving Edinburgh utterly disgusted and horrified at what he had seen. Sobriety was more to him than Sunday observance. And yet human frailty may account for drunkenness, and palliate it at least in part. But the violation of the Sunday has its root cause, it is to be feared, in a spirit of contempt for the ordinances of the Christian Religion.
Edinburgh is not only the capital of Scotland, but the queen of Scottish cities. There are few finer cities, indeed, in all the world. Its broad and well paved streets are kept scrupulously clean. The buildings, almost all of them of granite, are tall and stately. And the site with its picturesque setting of hills is superb. On one of these hills, west from Prince street and Scott's Monument, stands the historic Castle like a grim sentinel guarding the approaches of the City. Climbing the hill and entering by the draw-bridge, we see, among other interesting relics of the past, the Chapel of the saintly Queen Margaret, and stand in the room where the ill-fated Mary Stuart took refuge after the murder of Rizzio, and where was born James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England. In another room hard by we gaze upon the ancient Regalia of Scotland, "worthy of a nation's pride and jealous preservation."
The run from Edinburgh to Glasgow by rail is made in a little more than one hour. Our route lies through Lanarkshire, famed for its coal mines and iron foundries. Glasgow, with a population of over one million, is the second city of the Empire. Unlike Edinburgh, it has no pretentions to beauty. Still, it has some fine streets and very beautiful parks. It contains, too, not a few notable buildings, and there are in and around it many places of great historic interest. Its water supply, brought from Loch Katrine, thirty miles distant, is not surpassed perhaps by that of any other city in the world.
Early in the morning we leave Glasgow for Oban by boat. Steaming down the Clyde, we get a good view of the docks and of the ships both great and small that are a-building on either bank. A few miles down the river is Douglas Castle, and a little beyond, on the summit of a rock 260 feet in height, rises Dumbarton Castle, famed in Scottish story. We touch at Greenock and Dunoon, and thence make for Rothesay, the capital of Bute. On our left, as we near the Bute shore, we see Mount Stuart House, the seat of the Marquis.
Leaving Rothesay, the steamer runs up the Kyles or narrows (from the Gaelic caolas, a strait) of Bute, round the northern end of the island, and down the other side towards Ardlamont Point on the mainland. The scenery on this strait is very fine, wooded mountain, loch, and glen blending their varied beauties into one picturesque whole. Rounding Ardlamont Point, we steer straight for the harbour of Tarbert, on the coast of Kintyre. Away to the south, and but dimly visible in the haze, is the island of Arran. From Tarbert we proceed up Loch Fyne to Ardrishaig, 180 miles from Glasgow, at the head of the Crinan Canal. This canal, which connects Loch Fyne with Loch Crinan, and is nine miles in length, runs, for a great part of the way, along the base of forest-clad hills.
By this time, unluckily for us, it has begun to rain heavily, which mars our enjoyment of the rest of the trip to Oban. As the boat stops for the opening of the locks of the canal, we hear people on shore talking in Gaelic and realize that we have left the Lowlands behind. In spite of the rain two little barefooted girls and a little boy who has shoes on (shame on him!) follows us from lock to lock, selling milk by the glassful to the passengers. The children are quite brave at first, and stare at us, as much as to say, "What do we care what these English strangers say or think of us." But the moment I speak to them in Gaelic, they grow shy of me, and the poor little girls look as if they were ashamed to be seen in their bare feet.
Leaving Crinan, the western terminus of the canal, we have on our right the mainland of Argyle; on our left are the islands of Jura and Scarba. Between the two is the famous whirlpool of Corryvrechan, the roar of which may be heard at a distance of many miles. Away in the west, beyond Ross of Mull, lies far-famed Iona, with Ulva dark and Colonsay
And all the group of islets gay That guard famed Staffa round.
Presently we descry Dunollie Castle, once the chief stronghold of the Lords of Lorn, and soon after land in Oban.
Oban has been called the Charing Cross of the Highlands. And such it is in the sense of being the great distributing centre for tourists and travellers by rail or boat. But in every other sense how unlike is this quiet little town, with its cosy harbour and crescent beach, where the wavelets play at hide-and-seek with the pebbles, to the bustling railway station in the heart of the biggest and busiest of all earth's cities! During the summer months this cosy harbour is crowded with pleasure yachts from all parts of the world, and the hotels that line the pebbly beach are thronged with tourists from every land.
For Oban is a dainty place In distant or in nigh lands, No town delights the tourist race Like Oban in the Highlands.
So wrote the late Professor Blackie, himself a frequent visitor in his day to this charming resort on the shore of the western sea.
At Oban in the early morning we take the 'Gael' steamship for far Gairloch in Rosshire. Dunollis Castle is on our right as we steam out of Oban Bay and make for Lismore Light, on the extreme southern end of the island of that name. Thence our way lies through the Sound of Mull to Ardnamurchan Point. The scenery along this Sound, where you have the mountains of Mull on the one hand, and on the other those of misty Morven, is surpassingly grand. Here on the Morven shore, in Ardtornish Castle, ancient seat of the Lords of the Isles, is laid the opening scene of Scott's well-known poem, which begins with the lines:
"Wake, maid of Lorn," the minstrels sung. Thy rugged halls, Ardtornish, rung, And the dark seas thy towers that lave, Heaved on the beach a softer wave, As 'mid the tuneful choir to keep The diapason of the deep.
Near the other end of the sound is Tobermory (Mary's Well), the chief seaport of Mull, a very pretty town, in whose land-locked harbour ships of any tonnage find securest anchorage. This port has for us a very special interest, as we have reason to believe that from hence our grand-parents sailed in the dawn of the century to make for themselves a home, beyond the stormy Atlantic, in what was then the wild woods of Nova Scotia.
All day long, from early morn till set of sun, we follow our sinuous course through the sounds and lochs and bays of this western sea, calling here or there to land or take on passengers. After leaving Torbermory while rounding Ardnamurchan Point, and until we gain the shelter of towering Scaur-Eigg, a perpendicular cliff some five hundred feet high at the southwestern extremity of the island of that name, we are in the open Atlantic, with no land to the west of us nearer than America. North of Ardnamurchan lies Moidart, where Prince Charlie landed on the 25th of July, 1745, and whence after many wanderings and hair-breadth escapes he sailed, on the 20th September of the following year, a hopeless and broken man.
From Eigg we cross over to Arisaig. Judging by what one can see of it from the deck of a steamer, it is far from being as fertile as the district that has been named after it in Nova Scotia. But perhaps there is no other spot on the western coast of Scotland where the view landward and seaward is so varied and so magnificent.
After landing passengers at Arisaig, we steam along the coast of Morar on the mainland, having on our left the islands of Eigg, Rum, and Canna, and in front of us the southern extremity of Skye. Soon we enter the Sound of Sleat, and passing through the Kyle of Lochalsh, hug the eastern or inner shore of Skye till we reach Portree. It is a perfect day. The sun shines brightly, and the face of the laughing waters is gently fanned by the summer winds. And the scenery is as grand as it is diversified. Leaving Portree (King's Port), so-called from having been visited by James V. of Scotland while cruising round these isles, we enter once more the Sound of Raasay. On the Skye shore, near the little island of Holm, is to be seen the entrance to a cave famed as one of the hiding places of the unfortunate Prince Charlie. Presently we pass out of the Sound of Raasay and enter the Minch. On the left, beyond the northern promontory of Skye, some of the Hebridean Islands are visible in the dim distance. Behind us the mountains of Skye rise in gloomy grandeur. As one gazes upon them, there comes to one's mind these words of MacCrimmon's Lament, done into English by Sir Walter Scott:
Farewell to each cliff, on which breakers are foaming, Farewell to each dark glen in which red deer are roaming; Farewell lovely Skye, to lake, mountain, and river-- Return, return, return, we shall never. (Cha till, cha till, cha till sinn tuille.)
Gairloch has a fine hotel--with prices to match. It is a charming place, this quiet hamlet by the sea, but lonely withal. For here, away up north, one has that sense of isolation, of being cut off from the great world, which is itself twin-sister to the feeling of loneliness.
We leave Gairloch early in the morning for Inverness, travelling by coach for 30 miles to Achnasheen (Field of the Fairies) and thence by rail. In the first five miles the road runs, part of the time, through a fine forest of larches, which seem to be related to our juniper tree, but are very tall and stately. On emerging from the wood and beginning the descent of a steep hill, we come of a sudden upon a loch which seems to surpass all the Scottish lochs in the wild and rugged grandeur of the scenery along its shores. It was some such sight as here greets our eyes that inspired Sir Walter's muse to sing,--
Stranger; if e'er thine ardent step hath traced The northern realms of ancient Caledon, Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed, By lake and cataract her lonely throne; Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known, Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high, Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry, And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.
For where more fittingly than here by Loch Maree, on some lonely mountain peak, could the Queen of Wilderness set up her throne? Here, in sooth, are pathless glen and mountain high and torrents flung from cliffs. And the very spirit of Desolation seems to brood over the place. You may travel miles on this loch without seeing a single human habitation. Steep mountains, bare of trees and even of vegetation, shut it in on all sides. The loftiest peak in Ruadh Stac Mor, which rises to a height of 3,309 feet; but there are several other peaks almost as high. Half way up the loch is a summer hotel for tourists, where Queen Victoria stayed a week something more than a score of years ago. Over against this hotel, near the other side of the loch, is a wooded islet, called Isle Maree, on which may be seen the ruins of a monastery, "in days of yore," says our guide book, "an oasis of learning in the desert of heathenism." Tradition has it that the waters of a well on this little island (mayhap another Tobair Moire or Mary's Well!) cured insanity--a tradition which the gentle Quaker poet Whittier has embalmed in these lines:
Calm on the breast of Isle Maree A little Well reposes: A shadow woven of the oak And willow o'er it closes, And whoso bathes therein his brow, With care or madness burning, Feels once again his healthful thought And sense of peace returning. Life's changes vex, its discords stun, Its glaring sunshine blindeth; And blest is he who on his way That fount of healing findeth!
I suspect that Loch Maree is an English corruption of the Gaelic Loch Mairi (Loch Mary or Mary's Loch). The monks were ever and everywhere devout clients of the Blessed Mary. It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that the community of monks who anciently made their home in this romantic spot named both the loch and the little isle on which they built their monastery after their Heavenly Patroness.
On leaving Loch Maree the road follows the bed of a brook for some distance up a dark glen. On either hand are "rising mountains red with heather bells," on the slopes of which the hardy Highland sheep are grazing. Once the summit of the ridge is gained, it is down hill to Achnasheen, where we take the train for Inverness. Our way for several miles lies through a wilderness, but all at once we come upon a lovely strath, in as high a state of cultivation as any district we have seen in the Lowlands or even in England. It looks all the more beautiful by contrast with the barren and desolate region through which we have just passed. The name of it I cannot for the moment recall. But the valley itself as I saw it, with the bloom of summer upon it, and the light of the westering sun, is vividly present to my imagination.
Inverness, at the mouth of the River Ness, is, after Edinburgh, the handsomest city in Scotland. Prof. Blackie sings its praises in the following sonnet:
Some sing of Rome, and some of Florence; I Will sound thy Highland praise, fair Inverness; And till some worthier bard thy thanks may buy, Hope for the greater, but not spurn the less. All things that make a city fair are thine, The rightful queen and sovereign of this land Of bens and glens, and valiant men, who shine Brightest in Britain's glory roll, and stand Best bulwarks of her bounds--wide-circling sweep Of rich green slopes and brown empurpled brae, And flowering mead, and far inwinding bay, Temple and tower are thine, and castled keep, And ample stream, that round fair gardened isles Rolls its majestic current, wreathed in smiles.
Scotland, as a glance at a map of the globe will show, is several degrees farther north than Nova Scotia. Up here at Inverness, during the first week of August, the twilight lasts till after 10 p.m. Towards the end of June, when the day is at its longest, the sun does no more than dip for a few hours below the horison, and at no time of the night does its light fade away altogether from the northern sky.
Four miles from Inverness is Culloden Moor. But we visit not that "field of the dead" so fraught with saddening memories to every Highlander.
Leaving the capital of the Highlands, we go by boat to Fort William through the Caledonian Canal. This passage is sixty-two miles long. There are twenty-four miles of canal, and thirty-eight of natural lake, namely, Loch Ness (24 miles), Loch Oich (4 miles), and Loch Lochy (10 miles). On these lochs and along the stretches of land between them the scenery is of surpassing beauty. On either side is a range of purple hills rising in places to a great height. Now they close in about us as if to dispute our passage. The next moment they fall back and form into line in the rear, keeping ward over the great highway of waters that cleaves the land of the Scottish Gael in twain and weds two seas together. And now Ben Nevis (4,406 ft.) looms afar off on the left, lording it over all the hills. At his feet and under his very shadow stands Fort William, known to the old folk as An Gearristan. Along the plain below rolls the Lochy River till it empties its waters into Loch Linnhe. Those glens that lie at the foot of the mountain range northeastward from Ben Nevis are Ruaidh and Spean, along the rivers of the same name. And this is Lochaber, "synonym for an exile's wail." Children we of those sad-eyed exiles, is it any wonder that our hearts beat more quickly as we gaze on the heather-clad hills now rising before us? Even we, of the third generation, still feel within us something of their heart-hunger for the old home they loved so well--the heart-hunger which found a voice and still finds an echo in that saddest of sad refrains,
Lochaber, Lochaber, Lochaber no more, We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
The Highlands, and the islands on the west of Scotland, are to-day but sparsely populated. A hundred years ago these lovely straths and glens were filled with people. Even the braes and moorlands, now so bare and barren, yielded a frugal livelihood to a hardy race of men whose wants were few and tastes most simple. To-day whole districts are given over to sheep and deer.
In Highland glens 'tis far too oft observed, That man is chased away and game preserved.
So wrote the Hon. John Bright, in blunt but honest English fashion. More pathetic is the tale of desolation as told in Gaelic verse--in lines of exquisite tenderness and beauty--by one who is a native of those glens and "to the manner born"--one who has in our own day successfully wooed the Highland Muse "'mang the bonnie Highland heather"--Macleod, the spirited bard of Skye. I quote two or three stanzas from his poem, Anns a Ghleann 'san Robh Mi Og:
Tha na fardaichean 'n an fasaich Far an d'araicheadh na seoid, Far'm bu chridheil fuaim an gaire, Far'm bu chairdeal iad mun bhord; Far a fhaigheadh coigreach baigh, Agus anrach bochd a lon; Ach cha'n fhaigh iad sin's an am so Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.
Chaochail maduinn ait ar n-oige Mar an ceo air bharr nam beann, Tha ar cairdean 's ar luchd-eolais Air a fogradh bhos us thall; Tha cuid eile dbuibh nach gluais, Tha'n na cadal buan fodh'n fhod, 'Bha gun uaill, gun fhuath, gun anthlachd, Anns a' ghleann's an robh iad og.
Mo shoraidh leis gach cuairteig, Leis gach bruachaig agus cos: Mu'n tric an robh mi 'cluaineis 'N am 'bhi buachailleachd nam bo-- 'Nuair a thig mo reis gu 'ceann, Agus feasgar fann mo lo, B'e mo mhiann a bhi's an am sin Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.
The song has been done into English, or rather into mixed English and broad Scotch, but it has lost somewhat in the rendering. The foregoing stanzas run thus in the translation:
Now in ruins are the dwellin's, Where ance lived a gallant clan; Their's was aye the friendly welcome, Their's was aye the open han'; There the stranger and the puir Found a place at the fire-en'; Now alas! there's nane tae greet them In my bonnie native glen.
Like the mist upon the mountain Youth's glad morn of promise died, And our kinsfolk and acquaintance, They are scattered far and wide; Some of them are sleepin' soun' Neath the shadow of the ben, That were ance baith leal and hearty In their bonnie native glen.
But now fare ye weel each fountain, Each sweet dell an' grassy brae, Where fu' aft the kye I herded, In my boyhood's happy day. When life's gloamin' settles down, An' my race is at an en', 'Tis my wish that death should find me In my bonnie native glen.
Wherever you travel in the Western Highlands you hear Gaelic spoken. And ever as it strikes upon your ears, there arises within you--at least if you happen to be a Highlander yourself--the question, Will the old tongue live on here amid the bens and glens that have echoed with it since immemorial time? Or is it doomed to die out in this its ancient home? It is hard to say. For my own part, I believe Gaelic will be spoken in the Highlands so long as there are Highlanders there. But I don't know how long that will be. Certainly they are far fewer to-day than they were at the beginning of the last century. And the country is becoming more and more a mere summer resort for tourists and sportsmen. As matters stand at present there is no future for the Highland youth in their Highland home. On growing up to manhood and womanhood, they drift into the cities of the Lowlands, or cross the ocean. And ever as they go, their sad hearts echo the wailing notes of MacCrimmon's Lament, or Lochaber No More. I wish I could share the confidence in the ultimate repeopling of the Highlands that is expressed--perhaps rather than felt--by the Skye bard already quoted, in the following lines:
'S bidh fhathast a cairdean Mar bha iad bho chian, An' duthaich nan ardbheann An aite nam fiadh; Gu curanta' laidir, Gu blath-chridheach fial, 'S an comhradh gach la Ann an canan nam Fionn.
With the Gaelic language there also survives in the Highlands the hospitable spirit for which Highlanders, and all Celts indeed, are noted wherever they are found. But while the people there give of their Highland cheer to all who visit them, they have a particularly warm place in their hearts for "muinntir America," their kinsmen from across the seas.
Leaving Fort William, we go by boat on Loch Linnhe to Oban. The boat calls at several places, among them Ballachulish, at the entrance to Loch Leven, whence we get a glimpse in the distance of Glencoe. Even on this bright summers day the narrow pass, hemmed in by frowning mountains, looks gloomy and dark--fitting theatre for the black and fearful tragedy that was enacted there.
From Oban we return to Glasgow through the Trossachs, part of the way by rail, part of the way by boat on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and part of the way by coach between the lochs. The whole country through which we pass is classic ground, familiar to every lover of Scott. To describe the scenery of the Trossachs, therefore, after the exquisite word-painting of it in prose and verse that we have from the pen of Sir Walter, were as "wasteful and ridiculous excess" as
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To add a perfume to the violet.
As I write these last words the solemn bells are tolling the death-knell of our beloved Queen. The whole Empire mourns, and the grief is heartfelt, for all own and feel to-day the truth of the lines written by the worthiest poet laureate of the long and glorious reign that is now ended,
"Her court was pure; her life serene: God gave her peace, her land reposed; A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen."
ROME.
A CHRISTMAS REMINISCENCE.
It is not often I am in a reminiscent mood. Even should the mood come upon me, I can seldom indulge it. In this work-a-day world the cares and duties of the present crowd out the memories of the past. But ever as the blessed season of Christmas comes round the mind is in a measure freed from the tyrant grasp of the present. And at the approach of this festival mine loves to go back, swiftly overleaping the barriers of space and time, to the dear old City on the Tiber, where I spent five of the happiest years of my life. I can remember as distinctly as though it were yesterday the day when first I set foot in Rome. It was toward the end of October, 1879. The sun shone out brightly from the deep blue of the Italian sky, and the soft, balmy breath of summer still lingered in the air. From early morning we had traversed a land of almost ideal loveliness, now skirting the shores of the sparkling Mediterranean, now dashing past villas and vineyards where the air was laden with the fragrance of the vintage. The sun was slowly sinking in the west as we passed Civita Vecchia, the seaport of Rome, and sped on our way through the dreary waste of the Roman Campagna. Soon the Alban Hills loomed up in front, while the line of sea-coast stretching away on the right was fast fading from the view. There, where the Tiber flings its tawny waters into the Mediterranean, once stood the City of Ostia, the ancient seaport of Rome, facing, as every student of Virgil knows, in the far distance, Carthage, Rome's most dreaded rival while yet she was "dives opum studiisque asperrima belli."
And now we are within the city walls, the train draws up to the depot, and I step forth, a stranger indeed, yet not with the feelings of one who sets foot in a strange city: for Rome, though force has made it the capital of United Italy, is and always will be the capital of Christendom, the centre from which radiate the lights of Catholicity over all the earth, and the home of the pilgrim from every land.
One who goes from America into Europe realizes that to have crossed the Atlantic is not merely to have left one part of the habitable globe and gone into another. It is a passing from the New World into the Old, in almost every respect a different world from the one that is left behind. And in no place as at Rome is it brought home to one who crosses the ocean that the Atlantic is not the only gulf that divides these two worlds. Rome is the typical city of the Old World, or rather is the Old World in miniature. There all its most striking characteristics meet as they do in no other European city. There you may study old world customs and the old world life in its many phases, old world art and architecture, and above all those old-world monuments and ruins around which gather a thousand historical associations. Here rises the Palatine Hill, the original site and centre of the embryo mistress of the world, where tradition places the dwelling of Romulus, and where later stood the gorgeous palace of the Caesars, whose ruins still attest its old-time grandeur. Below is the Roman Forum which once rang with the eloquence of Cicero, and traversing it from north to south, the Via Sacra or Sacred Way. At one end of the Forum is the Mamertine Prison, a dark and dismal underground dungeon, where kings led captive by pagan Rome were strangled or starved to death, and where still exists the spring which, according to tradition, St. Peter, imprisoned here under Nero, miraculously caused to flow in order to baptize his jailers. At some distance to the south stands the Colosseum, nearly one-third of a mile in circumference, and originally containing seats for 87,000 spectators. Here, in the arena, the scene of gladiatorial combats, thousands of Christian martyrs fought the good fight and won the crown. A quaint prophetic saying, which dates from the 8th century, has it that
While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand, When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall, And when Rome falls, with it shall fall the World.
But I should never end if I were to speak of all the monuments of both Pagan and Christian Antiquity that make Rome the connecting link between the ancient and the modern world.
The Rome of to-day is not the Rome of twenty years ago. The tourist who wandered and mused among the ruins in and around it then would scarcely know it now, so vast is the change that has come over it. Your matter-of-fact modern man, who scowls at antiquity and lives in and for the present only, would say that the change has been greatly for the better. Streets have been widened and straightened, numberless new ones have been opened, and the wide space east and south of the Esquiline Hill, once studded with venerable ruins, is now occupied by rows of huge brick buildings, inferior in make and unsightly. In a word, the old Rome, amid whose magnificent ruins still abode the genius of Antiquity, has all but disappeared, and the new Rome, a third-rate modern city, shorn of much of its historical interest, has usurped its place. "Rome in twenty or thirty years," wrote Mr. Frederick Harrison recently in the "Fortnightly Review," "has become like any other European city--big, noisy, vulgar, overgrown, Frenchified and syndicate-ridden."
Rome, Rome thou art no more As thou hast been! On thy seven hills of yore Thou sat'st a queen.
Newman had written of it, on visiting it for the first time in the early thirties of last century: "And now what can I say of Rome, but that it is the first of all cities, and that all I ever saw are but as dust (even dear old Oxford inclusive) compared with its majesty and glory?" It has certainly since then lost much of its charm for the tourist and the antiquarian. But the majesty and glory that so impressed Newman--these no spoiler's hand can pluck from the brow of the queenly city on the Tiber.
It is not merely the glamour antiquity throws around it that makes Rome a centre of attraction. In the wondrous works of art gathered into it from every side, in the number and magnificence of its churches and shrines, in the prestige it possesses as the capital of the Christian world for eighteen hundred years, it stands peerless among the cities of the earth. Anything like a detailed account of the art treasures in the Vatican alone would fill volumes. Almost every church in Rome, too, and every palace, has its works of art, its paintings, mosaics, and sculptures, of priceless value. And as for the churches, no words can fittingly describe them. "They could not have been in any place but Rome, which has turned the materials and buildings of the Empire to the purposes of religion." The exterior, save in the case of the large basilicas, is not striking; their beauty, like the glory of the king's daughter, is within. St. Peter's, of course, stands apart from and above them all, a world of wonders in itself. The first visit does not reveal its vastness nor the exquisite grace and delicacy of its proportions. It is only by visiting it again and again that one can, so to speak, take it all in, if indeed one can ever do so. There is this peculiarity about it, too, that it has what, for want of a better word to convey the idea, I am tempted to call a climate of its own. In winter, when Rome is swept by the tramontana, a penetrating and chilling wind which blows for days at a time from the snow-capped Apennines, making life scarce worth living in the fireless apartments of the Roman dwellings, you will find warmth and comfort within St. Peter's. And in vain will you seek amid the shady groves of the Roman villas for a tithe of the delicious coolness that dwells within the charmed circle of its walls all through the broiling heat of the summer months in Rome.
And what of the festival of Christmas in the Eternal City? In September, 1870, Victor Emmanuel's troops entered Rome by the breach of Porta Pia, and with their coming in the old-time Christmas and the old-time Easter went out. The faithful Romans have not had a Merry Christmas since. The Pope used to proceed in person to celebrate the midnight Mass at St. Mary Major's, where is preserved the Crib in which the Infant Saviour was laid on the night of His Nativity. With the exception of the Easter celebrations, it was the most imposing ceremony that could be witnessed at Rome in those days. The Saviour's Crib is always borne in procession through the church of St. Mary Major's on Christmas Eve. In some of the churches, and even in private houses, the scene of the Christ Child's birth in Bethlehem is represented in a wonderfully artistic and life-like way. One of these representations, which are got up mainly for the children, is to be seen in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, situated on the Capitoline Hill, where once stood a temple of Jove. Hither we students of the Propaganda used to wend our way, during the days within the octave of Christmas, to listen to the "children preachers of Aracoeli." These little ones, from five to ten years of age, standing on a platform facing the Christmas Crib, lifted their fresh young voices in greeting and prayer to their new-born King. It recalled the scene described in Matt. 21:15-16: the children crying in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and Jesus saying to those who would rebuke them, "Yea, have you never read, Out of the mouths of infants and sucklings thou has perfected praise."
THE ROSES OF ASSISI.
In The Ave Maria, of February 8, 1908, the noted Danish writer, Johannes Jorgensen, tells of a visit to Assisi, and makes this passing allusion to the singular phenomenon also alluded to in The Diary of a Pilgrim: "Then there is the rose garden where the bushes are strangely flecked as if with spots of blood." When the present writer stood beside this little plot, in the early days of July, 1900, the roses were not in bloom--it was past their season in Italy--but the bushes were in leaf, of course. Strictly speaking, it is not the bushes that bear the flecks of red, but the roses and the leaves. The impression made upon one is not soon effaced. It looks for all the world as if those leaves had been sprinkled with blood. Here and there a leaf seems to have caught a drop, a few, two or three, which left a crimson stain, while most show a fleckless green. But this is not the most striking phase of the phenomenon. It has passed into a proverb that there is no rose without its thorn, though Milton, in a flight of fancy, found in our lost paradise,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
But under the lovely sky of Italy and under the shadow of the Umbrian hills, in fair Assisi, famed forever as the birthplace and early home of the Poverello, grow roses without thorns. The writer felt the bushes with his hand, and proved them thornless. What is more, our little pilgrim group, of whom some have since gone on their long pilgrimage, were told on that July day, seven years ago, by the Prior of the Franciscan Monastery, a true son of Saint Francis if appearances count for aught, that time and time again was the experiment made of transplanting those bushes, and that they grew up with thorns and with stainless leaves. Here is the legend, if legend that can be called, which Nature seems to vouch for, copied from a leaflet, enclosing a spray of the rose leaves now brown with the years, which the writer brought with him from Assisi:
"One bitter winter's night, S. Francis being sorely tempted by the devil to lessen his austerities, overcame the evil one by throwing himself into a thicket of briers, and rolling himself in it till his body was all torn and bleeding. At the same moment the briers were changed into rose trees in full bloom, and a heavenly brightness shone around, and angels came to lead S. Francis to the Church of the Portiuncula, where Our Lord appeared to him in Person accompanied by His Mother and a heavenly host, and granted him the Indulgence of the Portiuncula. The miraculous rose bushes have no thorns, their leaves are stained with spots like blood in May, and can be seen in the Garden of the Friary adjoining the Portiuncula at the village of Santa Maria degli Angeli which is close to the Station of Assisi in Italy."
FROM NEW YORK TO NAPLES.
DECEMBER 10, '08.
We leave New York at noon. It is a perfect winter's day--the air cold and crisp, the sun brightly shining. There are all manner of craft in the North River, or Hudson, and our big ship makes her way among them with leisurely dignity. On our starboard is Jersey City; on the port side, the buildings of Old Manhattan raise their giant forms, fearfully and wonderfully tall. Presently we pass by the statue of Liberty, and leave the great metropolis of the New World behind. A marvellous city is New York, marching forward with gigantic strides to the forefront of the world's cities. Even now it is second only to London, and in ways not a few it is first. We pass out of the roar of its traffic, away from its teeming, busy life, and the restful ocean takes us to its heaving bosom.
"Our next port of call is Boston," says one passenger to another standing near him, just as we are getting out to sea. "Not at all," rejoins the other, "this boat doesn't call at Boston." An officer of the ship, who is standing by, is appealed to, and he bears out the first speaker. The news is received with surprise amounting almost to consternation. Hardly one of the passengers knew of this change in our programme of travel. Back to Boston; it is like going back home again! But to Boston we steer our course. Off Cape Cod, miles and miles out at sea, men are fishing in their dories. We pass within fifty yards of one, but so intent is he upon his work that he does not as much as cast one look at us. After a little we pick up our pilot, and begin threading our way through the narrow entrance to Boston harbour.
* * *
DECEMBER 11.
Our ship is docked at Charlestown. We go ashore, take an "L" road car at City Square, and speedily reach Boston. Our friends in the city, to whom we bade farewell a few days before, are almost thunderstruck at seeing us. They can scarce believe their eyes. We seem to have dropped upon them from the skies, or rather to have been spirited back through space from the ocean. A few words clear up the mystery. Next morning (Saturday) we say an early Mass, and hasten back on board. But the good ship "Cretic" is in no hurry to put to sea. She lingers for a full hour beyond the allotted time. We could not have missed her if we tried.
* * *
DECEMBER 12.
It is snowing heavily as we steam slowly out of Boston harbour. We drop our pilot, and at noon have the lightship abeam. At last we are fairly under way, but so thickly falls the snow that we move along at little more than half-speed, and the steamer's whistle keeps blowing as in a fog. After an hour or two we run out of the snowstorm, and the whistling ceases. A tugboat inward bound, towing three huge barges, is the last object we descry this day, for darkness soon settles upon the scene.
This evening I sit and listen dreamily to the soft accents of the Italian tongue. One or two of the saloon passengers are Italian and the ship's doctor is a native of the land of sunshine and song. It is twenty-five years since I dwelt in that land, but those intonations strike the ear and those inimitable gestures the eye as familiarly as if it were but yesterday. What a wonderful thing is memory! How it bridges the years, and brings the dead past to life again! By it we reverse the poet's process, and "stretch a hand through time to catch" the forms of things long passed away.
"Vedi Napoli e poi Mori." This, my Italian friend tells me, is the original of the saying that runs in English: "See Naples and die." As you approach Naples, Mount Vesuvius rises in the rear, and beyond it is the little town of Mori. The original saying is, "See Naples and then Mori." But as it happens that "mori" is also the imperative of the verb "morire"--"to die," a play upon the word gives the meaning, "See Naples and then die"--as if no place else worth seeing were left in all the wide world.
* * *
DECEMBER 13.
Our first Sunday at sea, the third of Advent. We have passed from the region of snow and sleet, and the change is welcome. The morning breaks bright and clear, and as the day wears on it grows distinctly warmer. The sun shines out of a cloudless sky and the air is balmy as in a June day. While I write the thermometer out on the promenade deck shows 56 degrees in the shade. Frost and snow are things of the past--things of the land we have left behind.
Not having a portable altar, we are unable to say Mass. There are more than seven hundred persons in the steerage, mostly Italians seeking "la bella patria"--their own lovely homeland. I arrange with the captain to have a service for them at 3 p.m. The second-class saloon being too small, we hold the service under an awning on the deck. Dressed in cassock and with my rochet on--for the very first time--I kneel upon the main hatch and say aloud in Latin the Rosary and Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which they all answer in the same tongue. These people, I may remark by the way, are all taught from childhood to say those prayers in the language of the Church. Prayers over, I address them a few words in Italian, the season and the occasion furnishing a theme. Exiles are we from home, seeking a fatherland afar, and One has come down from that fatherland to raise us up and to lead us on. As we cross the sea of life, not always calm and untroubled as the one we sail to-day, we must pause from time to time to lift up our eyes and fix them on the eternal truths that shine like stars upon our pathway. We must prepare for the advent of the Sun of Justice, and from the lesser lights turn our gaze longingly to the bright morning Star that heralds His rising. Such is the sum of what I said, but I must own that it sounds much better in this English summary than it did in such poor Italian as I could muster.
* * *
DECEMBER 14.
At noon the log reads:
Lat. Long. Weather Remarks 41.34 56.28 Fresh gale: W. SW. Dis. 317 SW. S. S. W., rough quarterly sea. Average Speed: 13.49
We have run into a storm, or it has run in upon us. "Fresh gale" means a wind blowing 50 or 60 miles an hour. But our ship is very steady. Still there is a good deal of motion--of that queer, all-round, uncertain, miserable motion so apt to induce sea-sickness. My companion, though he has been so seldom to sea, is a better sailor than I. As for me, I feel that I could very easily be quite sick if I wanted to. But I don't want to, and up to a certain point one can fight this sickness off. My chief occupation all day is fighting off seasickness. The wild winds, the wailing sea-waves, the reeling, staggering ship keep telling me it is of no use; that I had better crawl into my berth and give up the uneven struggle. But I hold out in spite of all of them. As I write this in the steamer's library at 6 p.m. the battle is still on and the issue somewhat doubtful.
* * *
DECEMBER 15.
The battle is fought and won--thanks to the abating of the storm and a calmer sea. The weather to-day is fine and warm--58 degrees in the shade. It was 68 degrees yesterday, and the mugginess of the atmosphere made it unpleasant. For me, indeed, it is never too pleasant on board ship. I have an uneasy feeling that the most one can hope for is a truce, and that the battle with sea-sickness may have to be fought over again at any moment. Under such circumstances writing is not easy.
The sea, the deep mysterious sea, with its changeful, elusive hues and its passionate moods! The dominant mood, I fancy, is melancholy. The sea lifts up its voice only to weep, and every sea-sound dies away in a sob or a wail. When the crested waves break into foam, what are the spray drops but the tears of the salt sea? It not only yields a grave to the countless millions that are buried beneath its waters, but weeps for them ever, and chants over them an unending requiem. And its loneliness is beyond words. Mid-ocean seems the native home of solitude--a solitude that the passing ship leaves unbroken. What a tale this lonely, moaning sea could tell of the men who have sunk into its depths, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown!" But till it gives up its dead, that tale shall not be told.
* * *
DECEMBER 16.
Late last evening I sat talking in the smoking-room with a Protestant gentleman from Minneapolis. Some years ago he visited the Holy Land, and I was interested in the account he gave of it. He does not seem to have been much impressed by the country itself or its sanctuaries. "The most beautiful sight I saw in the Holy Land," he declared with evident sincerity, "was the face of a nun." It was not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of the face that struck him and imprinted itself upon his memory. A beautiful soul beamed out from it--a soul made beautiful by close communion with God. "I will feed on God," says Alexandrine in A Sister's Story, not knowing very well at the moment what she means. But she did feed on God, and became beautiful as an angel, with that beauty which never can fade. If we would be truly beautiful let us feed on God the Uncreated Beauty, ever ancient and ever new.
* * *
DECEMBER 17.
How shall we feed on God? First by prayer. Not as completely is the fish immersed in the sea or the bird in the air as the soul is in God, for He is everywhere, and "in Him we live, and move, and are." Every time we breathe we drink in the fresh air to renew the life of the body; every time we pray, if we pray aright, we draw down the grace of God to give new life to the soul. And as when a man ceases to breathe we know that the life is gone out of him, so when a man ceases to pray we may know that his soul is dead within him. But there is another, a more literal and yet more wondrous way of feeding on God, and that is Holy Communion. "I am the Bread of Life," and again, "He who eats Me shall also live by Me." "As the hare in winter," says St. Francis of Sales, "grows white by feeding on the snow, so the soul grows white by feeding on this Heavenly Manna." The science may be at fault, but the thought is true. "It is the boast of the Catholic Church," observes Cardinal Newman, "that she can keep the young heart chaste, because she gives Jesus for food and Mary for nursing-mother." I am quoting from memory, and do not vouch for the exact accuracy of the quotation.
* * *
DECEMBER 18.
Last night we passed the first two of the Azores. These islands were discovered by Portuguese navigators about the middle of the fifteenth century, and still belong to Portugal. They number nine in all, and have a population of some 260,000. About noon we sight Pico, the third of the group, and steam by it for hours, at a distance of six or seven miles off. Though we have sunshine at sea, it is raining and misting ashore, and we fail to get a good view. However, I have counted as many as seven little villages where the snow-white cottages form into clusters on the sloping shore. These islands are of volcanic origin, and the conical peak of an extinct volcano seems to have given its name to the island we are passing by. It is visible for a moment or two, and we catch just a glimpse of it as it peeps out of a cloud. But it is a coy peak and hastes to hide itself beneath its veil of mist.
* * *
DECEMBER 19.
I have learned that the mountain we passed yesterday rises to a height of 7,460 feet, and slopes to the sea at an angle of 40 degrees. The bare head of it, uplifted above its bed of cloud, and outlined against the blue sky, with the sun shining full upon it, is still vividly before my imagination. No human eye witnessed the volcanic upheavel which cast this mountain peak up into the clouds out of the bosom of the sea. But Captain Tillard of H.M.S. "Sabrina" was eye-witness, in 1811, of the rise and extinction of an island in the neighbourhood, which reached a height of 410 feet and was swallowed up by the sea after an existence of 119 days.
For more than a week we have held our lonely way on the ocean, no sail seen, no smoke of steamer on the far horizon. The sea gulls alone bear us company, whether the same birds that followed us from the first, or fresh relays from the pastures of the deep, no one can tell. Birds of ocean, foster-children of the wandering sea, their home is on the rolling wave, their haunts no man may know. But the same Providence that feeds the sparrows on the dry land gives food to these rovers on the wilderness of waters.
* * *
DECEMBER 20.
Our second Sunday at sea. I say the Rosary and Litany in the second cabin, where there are a number of Italians. I also give a short instruction. A wee mite of a boy, with the coal black hair and dark complexion of the South, keeps eyeing me curiously the while, as if wondering how one who looks so little like a countryman can speak the language.
Ever since we got fairly away from the American coast we have had summer weather, the thermometer ranging from 50 to 70 degrees. The temperature of the water has been even higher. One day it was 72 degrees; this morning it was 62. The Gulf Stream is here at its widest. Only the short day can bring home to us the fact that we are at the winter solstice.
* * *
DECEMBER 21.
To-day the larger gulls that haunt the seashore and nest in the rocks are abroad. They are tokens that the land is not very far away. Sometime to-night we reach Gibraltar, but must lie outside till morning, for no ship can enter the port of that grim fortress save in the day.
Now that our ocean voyage is nearing its end, our thoughts turn back to the loved ones we have left behind. The uppermost feeling in my own mind at the moment is gratitude, first to God for all His goodness, and next to the many friends, whether personally known to me or not, who have so generously given of their means and freed my mind from all anxiety on that score. I feel that I owe them more than can be put in words. May the peace of God and His blessing abide with them always, and may He, in His own way and in His own good time, repay them a hundredfold.
This batch of notes was mailed at Gibraltar.
* * *
FROM NEW YORK TO NAPLES