Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/689

CHAPTER IX.

CONTINUATION OF EUROPEAN TOUR.

Through France—Dijon and Lyons—The palace of the Popes—The Amphitheater at Arles—Visits Nice—Pisa and its leaning tower—The Pantheon—Modern Rome—Religion at Rome—Rome of the Past—Vesuvius and Naples—Through the Suez Canal—Life in the East—The Nile—The religion of Mahomet—At the graves of Theodore Parker and Mrs. Browning—The mountains of the Tyrol.

ASIDE from the great cities of London and Paris, with their varied and brilliant attractions, the American tourist will find no part of a European tour more interesting than the country lying between Paris and Rome. Here was the cradle in which the civilization of Western Europe and our own country was rocked and developed. The whole journey between these two great cities is deeply interesting and thought-suggesting. It was the battle-ground and the scene of heroic endeavor, where every inch of the field was sternly disputed; where the helmet, shield, and spear of Eastern civilization met the sling and arrow and desperate courage of determined barbarism. Nor was the tide of battle always in one direction. Indications of the sternness and duration of the conflict are still visible all along the line. These are seen in walled and fortified towns, in grim and solemn convents, in old monasteries and castles, in massive walls and gates, in huge iron bolts and heavily barred windows, and fortifications built after the wisdom of the wary eagle on lofty crags and clefts of rocks and mountain fastnesses, hard to