THE ROBERT E. COWAN COLLECTION L'RKSKXTKD TO THK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BY C. P. HUNTINGTON JUNE, 1897. flccessiori No Class No. y^f>^*- A*V * Brief Qomparatiwe I^euieu; Days i i? %u rope S23PK36S6fiiS was reminded, after seeing a few of those remains, of Mark Twain's admo- nition in his " Innocents Abroad" to his guide on showing him an Egyptian mummy, to show him a nice fresh corpse. It doesn't take long to size up all that. 28 SIXTY DAYS IN VI. SCENERY. MOUNT VESUVIUS. i. Quite an imposing affair, and now that you can ride to within 150 feet of the crater in a comfortable car- riage and modern cable railroad car, fully compensates a day's travel, pro- vided you have retained your self- respect by standing off in good American style the officious volunteer guides who try to terrorize you into the belief that you cannot walk a couple of hundred feet up and around a mountain top without their assistance; by giving them the few dimes they were so eager to make a pretense of earning, but dis- pensing with their assistance, and thereby gaming their respect also. SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 2 9 The volcano itself a yawning furnace, vomiting forth intermittently with start- ling uproar great clouds of vapor and glowing ashes. An impressive messenger from below, rather more so than our own boiling springs in L,ake County and the Gey- sers, but not so interesting as a whole; and not so effective at all, I judge, as the wonders of Yellowstone Park. THE RHINE. 2. From Mayence to Cologne, prob- ably one hundred and fifty miles or so, almost as handsome as the Hudson from Albany to New York and that is handsome enough for any river with its old ruined castles (what infernal old scoundrels their owners mostly were, from all accounts, to be sure) and its romantic legends, quite an interesting sail on a Summer's day. 30 SIXTY DAYS IN KUROPK The Rhine Falls, about a day's travel farther up the river, the largest but not the highest in Europe, eighty feet or so of a tumble, at an angle of about forty -five degrees, a tall sentinel rock in the center to which one may be rowed through the eddies. A very picturesque place, and attract- ive hotel center, where one could spend a day or two very enjoy ably. We won't refer to American scen- ery in that respect. It would not be kind to the Rhine Falls. 3. As to the beautiful I,AKES: Killarney we saw under the disadvan- tage of a wet day and a howling mob of stalwart mendicants, male and female, that under the guise of pony- drivers and goat's milk and potheen venders, and echo exploders made our lives a burden through the Gap of Donloe, SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 31 and all of whom should be scourged out of the country, as giving tourists, and therefore spreading abroad the idea, that there is less self-respect and more beggary in Ireland than there really is. The Swiss and Italian lakes we saw after having seen much else possibly this and a perfectly delight- ful day may have prejudiced my views, but the Scotch lakes L,omond and Katrine, with their surroundings, lying on the Trosachs route between Glasgow and Edinburgh, which I had hardly heard of before appear to me as handsome as any in Europe. 4. As to MOUNTAINS, the Alps are certainly very fine, with their clear- cut peaks and eternal , snows in places but from a picturesque point of view it occurs to me that as a 32 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE rule they are quite unnecessarily bare and bleak, and that this pro- ceeds quite as much from lack of soil and consequent vegetation [as from altitude. However, I did not make the Alps, and I am not responsible for them or what is generally written about them; and, besides, as a Californian, I am afraid that as to mountain scenery I am a little bit spoiled. 5. And as to SKIES Well, suffice it to say, that beautiful scenery, lakes, mountains and skies are a California production, and in those, as in every- thing else she produces, she beats the world. 6. In describing the SCENERY one should not omit to mention the con- veniences for gentlemen only, to be seen quite distinctly on every street SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 33 corner, in Italy. To make the pic- ture complete, however, the ladies should have been provided with similar conveniences, but they are not built that wav. CHARACTERISTIC SCENE. 7. A magnificent Neapolitan drive, seven or eight miles along the bay, crowded with equipages to see the King, who had just come to port, drive by. A little ragged urchin conspicuous on a roadside elevation, sans-culoftes, squatted on his haunches, the sunlight streaming between his fat extremities, undisturbed, munching a crust and relieving his feelings, crown- ing the pinnacle in quite a startling way, watching for the King to go by, which he presently did in full view. 34 SIXTY DAYS IN KUROPE A fine soldierly-looking man in red, in an ordinary town carriage like our own too many decorations on his breast to satisfy my ideas of repub- lican simplicity, but a good king and a good man striving patriotically and successfully to improve the condition of his people, to whom, if I had recognized him in time, I should therefore have been glad to have raised my hat. SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 35 VII PICTURESQUE OI,D TOWNS, if they ever existed, are pretty nearly extinct in Europe. Speeding along on the railroad through Italy, you could see suggestions of the article from your car window quite near enough in the towns gath- ered around the mountain tops under the aegis of some mediaeval castle as a protection from the ' ' Guelphs ' ' and the " Ghibelines, ' ' the aforesaid robbers and human tigers of the feudal ages. Little toads, winking and blinking in the noonday sun, hardly daring yet to stick their heads out from under its protecting shell for fear of the spoiler, who, let us hope, has passed away forever. 36 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE VIII As TO THE GREAT CITIES AND THE PEOPLES. i. The manners and customs of the various nations appear to be approxi- mating each other astonishingly, as well as the fashions, which appear sub- stantially the same throughout Europe. London apparently setting the fashion for Paris, and Paris for the Continent. The hotels up to a quite respectable and astonishingly uniform standard of excellence ; none, however, to compare, in many respects, with the Coronado Beach Hotel at San Diego, or quite equal to our own Palace Hotel at San Francisco. English spoken in them all, and but little trouble to get along without any other language. The home life of *the people barer SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 37 and more devoid of interest, but while working as continuously, not so hard, and taking life easier in this regard because the prizes for labor are not so glittering. More and cheaper public shows also. Their smaller countries more minute- ly cultivated, more perfectly trimmed up and completed; a charming continental park, full of pretty landscape views, without money and without price. Possibly greater community and con- tinuity of social life also (such as it is), because less liable to change of station. Greater refinement also among the poorer classes than their appearance in America when first struggling for a start or learning the lesson of American progress to sacrifice the present a little for the future would lead one to expect. 38 SIXTY D^YS IN EUROPE 2. Continental Europe appears mod- ern, democratic, prosperous and content- ed. Books of a generation, twenty or e\en ten years ago are evidently wholly inadequate to describe its present condition. Railroads and electricity, the union of Germany and of Italy, have evi- dently extinguished many warring antagonisms; changed the face of natuie, lightened the load of poverty, and l-.t in the sunlight of education and progress to illumine the dark places and brighten the lot of man. To-day the rulers are vying with each other to see which shall do most to conciliate their people and make them happy and contented with their rule. The evidences of this are seen on every hand, in almost every continental SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 39 city, in the improvements initiated or facilitated by the respective govern- ments. Notably in Germany and Italy, which have evidently awakened to a new life. Half of Rome and Naples have evi- dently been built in very handsome modern style, it would seem, within ten years or so, and the work still rushes on. While Paris, since the war with Ger- many, has been practically at a stand- still, Berlin has doubled in population, and now, with a population of 1,438,000 people, has claims to be considered the handsomest, as it is the most modern, capital city in Europe, with the finest looking and best dressed people. Their clothing for men and women, to be had in every shop at less prices and of infinitely better style and 40 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE finish than any we were able to see in Paris, and fully equal to any we saw in London. The Germans are the one race in Eu- rope that far surpassed my expectations. Large standing armies, at least as to Germany and Italy, are by no means an unmixed evil. They are welding their people to- gether, weaning them away from old sectional jealousies, petty strifes and superstitions. The army is a school from which their people graduate manlier, more intelligent and more patriotic citizens; and if a war comes it is as but a few Seattle fires, a few Johnstown floods, the evidences of which are soon obliterated. If the blood and iron spent result in thra.^hing out a new principle for SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPK 41 the advancement of the human race, or in bringing it a step nearer on the road to the final peaceful federation of the world, who can say that it has not been well expended. War now is not as in the past. It has been shorn of many of its terrors. The time has already almost come pro- phesied by Bulwer L,ytton in his " Com- ing Race," where every man had his weapon loaded with the mighty ' * Vrill ' ' with which he could destroy an army. So war was at an end, because it meant mutual annihilation. It means nearly that now. It is but an affair of a ft w weeks, or months at most, in the mean time but little disturbing the industries or home life of the people, instead of as in the past spreading ruin and desolation every where. 42 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 3. Great Britain and Ireland" s isola- tion from continental wars, together with the safety-valve of emigration for her energetic and ambitious people, has preserved an institution that in Con- tinental Europe has long since been ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones, the rulers and the people, namely the Aristocracy, which by ruling society practically still rules Britain, and renders her, not- withstanding the reflex influence upon her institutions of her emancipated children abroad, one of the most con- servative of representative governments in Europe to-day. Happy fortune that it is so. If their lines were cast in more pleas- ant places at home her people that have created abroad and peopled another world of thought, feeling and action, SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 43 that is raising the human race to higher planes of effort and of happiness, might be frittering their energies away like the Swiss Mountaineers carrying bas- kets of earth to cover the nakedness of the Scotch Highlands, or like the L,owlanders of Holland digging dikes to rescue a few more scanty acres of Irelan 1 from the elements. Those little islands have done better work than raising corn and potatoes. They have been the nursery of a new world. They have raised men and women that, leaving behind the Old World, not yet quite emerged from semi- barbari m, with its little kings and queens and emperors with their little tinsel crowns and tawdry robes, their little soldiers with their little guns, their little aristocratic loafers with their 44 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE little selfish ways, have founded a new world. Following the instinct prescribed from on high that causes the polyp in ocean's depths to reach out its feelers for food, the beaver to build its dam, the bee to make its honey, and civilized man to work to decorate his bride and im- prove the lot ot his children have there crowned labor king. Under the benign rule of that mon- arch, at last come to his rightful in- heritance and ruling in truth by right divine, they are dominating the world. More than four -fifths of the white population of the United States to-day have sprung from the two little islands in the sea. As to what they have to show for themselves in their new home consult Carnegie's "Triumphant Democracy." SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 45 4. It has been shown that the United States represents six-tenths of the English-speaking people, which alto- gether constitute nearly one-third of all the civilized people on the globe to-day. That it owns a country, without Alas- ka, containing twice as great an area as all Europe without Russia, with one- seventh more miles of railway than combined Europe. That it is the wealthiest nation in the world by six billion dollars. The greatest agricultural and pastoral nation, producing one-third of the world's grain, cotton and wool. The greatest manufacturing cation in the world, producing nearly half as much as all Europe. That it produces half of the gold, one-third of the silver, one-fourth of the copper and lead, one-third of the 46 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE coal and iron, o\vns three-fourths of all the coal lands, all the natural gas, and most of the petroleum in the world, with half as much ship- ping as Great Britain and Ireland, and as much as the five nations next in order combined. Truly the little powers of Europe shrivel up in comparison. 5. Our own great STATE OF CALI- FORNIA, with its 156,000 square miles of territory, only 50,000 behind the 208,000 of imperial Germany. In size the second state in the Great Republic. The greatest in per capita wealth and among the least in debt. The greatest wheat-growing State in the Union ; producing nearly one- eleventh of the whole crop of the United States. SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 47 The greatest in mining resources. The finest climate in the world therefore the most diversified and the richest per capita in its agricultural productions. With manufacturing products valued at one hundred and seventy million dollars per annum and in commerce its principal city ranking among the great cities of the Union ; third in value of imports and sixth in value of exports. With a clean page upon which to write its future history and such a people to make and write it, it is a home fit for the sovereigns that its people are. 6. San Francisco, too, with her grand old Pacific Ocean ready to bear the world's commerce to her shores. Her magnificent bay and harbor, un- 48 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE excelled yes, unequaled in the world ! Her grand water-ways, bearing the products of an Empire State to her wharves. Her hills and vales admitting of views of urban scenery unsurpassed in the world; with her elegant cable-car sys- tem, the creation of her own genius, unequaled anywhere, enabling her people to get the full benefit of their scenic advantages. Her surrounding and ever-improving pleasure resorts, with natural advan- tages inferior to none. Her handsome and extensive parks, national and municipal, fully equal to the best; her fruits and flowers un- equaled in the world not even a good second anywhere in sight. Her beautiful women and children, nothing like them this side of Paradise. SIXTY DAYS IN KUROPK 49 Her bounteous sunshine to inspire her people to effort ; her balmy winds and cot so inspiring fogs to check their ardor and remind them of their mortal- ity. One of the world's great commercial centers if only her children would strive for their heritage. One of the world's great pleasure cities, also if they would only put their house in order to receive their guests. A home for the gods, it being al- ways understood that the gods don't wear any clothes to be torn or soiled in our wretched streets. I am bound to confess that San Fran- cisco, in respect to its streets is alto- gether the worst I have seen, and I have now seen nearly all the principal cities in Europe and America. Nothing like it in the civilized w r orld. 50 SIXTY DAYS IN EURO?E When we landed in Ireland I expected something similar in this respect, but Queenstown, Cork, Limeric, Dublin, Belfast, all handsome, smooth and clean, not only in the cities but the country roads, making driving a positive pleas- ure and giving an appearance of thrift, neatness and refinement everywhere that I was glad to see in Ireland. Glasglow another Chicago no use of looking there for evidences of semi- barbarism. Edinburgh with her hills and vales, old town and new, all smooth and clean as a pin. London, with much costly wooden pavement, laid with tireless care, over which the immense traffic rolled without a jar. Boys running under the horses heels with basket and pan to pick up the droppings. Whitechapel splendid UNIVERSITY SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 51 wide thoroughfare crossed by narrower streets and little alleys ( through which we roamed on Sunday morning to see the Jews' rag fair cf old clothes patronized by the poorer working peo- ple), all smooth, and strong and clean, no suggestion of the murdering fiend who has terrorized half the poor unfor- tunates of London. Paris with its magnificent boulevards and handsome streets, where the care- less dropping of a piece of paper is a public offense. No parallel there. Well, then, in Italy. Turin, neat, handsome and wide thor- oughfares, paved with stone. Smooth wide flags laid like rails on each side of the street, over which the carriages roll smoothly and with little noise. Its boulevards on the banks of the Po a delightful driveway. 52 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE Genoa in the old town, streets, nar- row but smooth and solid ; the newer portion on higher ground overlooking the bay and surrounding cit}^ and country, wide, handsome, commanding and clean. Well, then, old Rome. No not old Rome, which is renewing its youth and blossoming out again like a green bay tree. The Corso, still its principal street, only fifty feet wide, but smooth, solid and clean. Its new avenues stretching out in the suburbs hand- some and wide. No San Francisco there. Well, then, Naples with its lazza- ron and its plague only a year or two old. No, not Naples streets wide, smooth and handsome. In the poorer quar- SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 53 ters a little unswept, but as a rule clean and always solid and smooth. Its driveway around the bay front, three or four miles long, banked up with solid masonry, recently inaugu- rated and completed, a thing of beauty and joy forever. Florence streets, driveways and boulevards there that justly entitle it to its title ''Beautiful Florence." Venice has but little use for streets, but those she has, though narrow, are solid and clean enough. Milan handsome modern city, streets wide and clean and new, and where not so wide and handsome, fast being made so by opening new boule- vards at great expense. Nothing in Italy to compare our streets with. Switzerland, then. 54 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPK Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Zurich, Constance, not by a large majority, clean and well kept the order of the day. Not a mountain road in sight any- where that would not be ashamed to own such dirt and shiftlessness. Basel, then. The corner of three nations France, Switzerland and Ger- many. Handsome, well-built streets, wide and clean, verdure everywhere. Such a thing not to be suggested. Germany, then. Mayence, Strasburg and Cologne, a little gloomy under their recent change of masters, cannon rumbling, soldiers marching, and officers being serenaded with great parade in their hotels, but have not lost their hearts or heads suf- ficiently to let their streets go to SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 55 wreck or blow dust in their faces and over their houses and gardens. Berlin. The most modern and one of the most attractive cities in Europe, with handsome streets, smooth and clean, a luxury to drive over them through the endless rows of handsome modern buildings, but little of militarism to be seen, and the old Emperor William's palace open to the public in the most democratic way. Not in Hamburg, one of the hand- somest as well as most enterprising cities in Europe. An elegant drive- way eight or nine miles along, the Alster lakes within the city lined with handsome houses and elegant dwellings an exposition in progress, manifold in its exhibits, in elegant buildings, in a handsome park that 56 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE would be a credit to any city ; half a dozen bands playing in different directions therein, a captive balloon ascension that in ten minutes gives me as good a view of the handsome city embowered in trees and parks as I got of Paris in the Eiffel Tower after half a day's waiting. A recent expendituie of the city of one hundred million marks (twenty-five million dollars), to the Empire's appropriation of about half as much more to inaugurate and carry to suc- cessful completion the actual excava- tion of a harbor I should say several hundred acres in extent for ships drawing twenty-seven feet of water, indicates that they would hardly be the kind of people to let their streets w r ear out or dry up and blow away or remain paved with crooked stones SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 57 over which a horse can hardly walk without danger of stumbling, or a woman without spraining her ankle, or a carriage roll without danger of a collapse and raising a din sufficient to wake the dead. The thrifty and patient Hollanders, too, who have stemmed and turned aside the ocean, and built their northern Venice Amsterdam upon piles, and have to exercise unceasing work to keep it and their lands above the waves, would not be likely to let their streets, w r hich they have builded and paved with so much care, go to wreck. In Amsterdam, streets wide and solid and handsome, running along the sides of and over the handsome bridges that cross co their numberless canals, k*-. v. , mfortable houses. 58 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE A city, I dare to say, quite as pic- turesque and far more useful than the Venice of the south, with its Italian skies and historic romances. The Hague and Rotterdam also sustain Holland's reputation for solid- ity and cleanliness. Belgium. In its two principal cities furnishes no parallel. Antwerp, clean, solid, strong, and altogether respectable. Brussels, this and much more another Paris or rather Berlin. Not in Lille, a great French man- ufacturing city with wide handsome streets and neat rows of comfortable houses, not so bustling as an Ameri- can city, but neat, solid and clean. Boulogne, solid and clean if not so wide; fine stone docks anc 1 Costly arti- - . V t. ooked st"uco ncial harbor. SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 59 There we are driven into the sea again without finding in civilized Europe a parallel to our thriftlessness. Not there then, and not in America ; certainly not in these cities with which San Francisco will consent to compare itself can their like be found. No wonder San Francisco hackmen charge four times European prices, $1.50 as against 30 and 40 cents per hour, and are suspected of forming a com- bination to influence our police courts in their favor. They ought to charge fourteen dollars an hour and threaten to garrote every man, woman and child in it so as to render it a desolate waste, unless they were released from the torture of driving over its streets in their present condition. More than once, when dilating on 60 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE the beauties of San Francisco, when launching into praise of her manifold advantages, has some listener inter- rupted : Is it not very dusty there ? Are your streets in good condition ? Is there not some trouble about your sewers ? From your mountain streams and surrounding sta you ought to have an ample supply of water, not only for household purposes, but for sprink- ling your streets and beautifying your cit}'. Have you this ? With your magnificent bay you ought to have fine accommodations for all your shipping and lumber interests. Have )*ou that? With your equable climate it ought to cost but little to build and keep in repair your surrounding driveways, SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 6 1 and make the suburbs of your city attractive. I presume you are making great progress in this direction? I suppose your people must be taking great interest in the Isthmus canals, the completion of which would bring the world's commerce to your wharves ? Your people could easily build it themselves with greater ease than old Hamburg dug her twenty-seven-foot harbor out of the solid earth at an expense to her of one hundred mill- ions. I suppose your people are making great efforts to secure competing lines of railroad to overcome your compar- ative isolation and develop the re- sources of your great State, which should support a dozen such. The great fortune I am told a few 62 SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE of your citizens made in that way should inspire others in the same direction. I am told you have fine deposits of petroleum within your State, and vast fields of coal and iron at Puget Sound within easy and cheap ship- ping distance. I suppose your citizens are making great efforts to make these deposits available, like Chicago piping natural gas 100 miles? Your manufactures ought to thrive apace. Holy smoke ! Please don't. Down goes San Francisco's plumage, bedraggled in the dust. Where is our boasted energy as com- pared with other communities ? Are we not rather approximating the native California!!, lolling lazily in the SIXTY DAYS IN EUROPE 63 noonday sun, content with the bless- ings God has showered on us with such lavish hand. Folding his talents in a napkin instead of putting them at interest to be returned many fold. Well, San Francisco is yet in her teens. When full maturity has develop- ed her charms she should be a beauty and a joy forever. Let us all hasten that happy con- summation. .