THE

LANDS OF THE MESSIAH,

MAHOMET, AND THE POPE.

CHAPTER I.

ROUND THE PENINSULA AND UP THE MEDITERRANEAN.

HAD Julius Cæsar been permitted in 1851 to revisit this world, that we might show him how much Britain had advanced since he first invaded our shores, it would have been desirable that he had popped up his head through the pavement at the Wellington Statue, before the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. Had he been guided by our own warrior, his equal in arms and in everything else, to some of the London lions;-had he been shown the Crystal Palace, and been conducted along the more crowded thoroughfares to the terminus of the South-Eastern Counties Railway, and seen the Electric Telegraph sending despatches to Paris in a minute; had he jumped into an express train, and gone to Southampton very smoothly at the rate of sixty miles an hour;-had he been taken on board of a man-ofwar carrying a hundred and twenty guns all sixty-eight pounders ;-had he been told that it required nine miles of canvass to make one set of sails, and an oak forest of five

A

hundred acres in extent to furnish her timbers;-had he next visited one of the Ocean Steamers belonging to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company; verily, the old Roman hero would in this way have seen more wonders in one day than he ever beheld in his life. These steamers -the "Himalaya," for instance, now building-measure upwards of three thousand tons, and are propelled by engines of twelve hundred horses' power. They realise a rate of (speed equal to that of eighteen miles in the hour; and in spite of both wind and tide, going upwards of four hundred and thirty miles daily, they reach Alexandria in a week. In one of these steamers, Cæsar would have found himself not merely in a floating hotel, but in something like an English royal borough with its carpenters, smiths, bakers, butchers with their live stock, grocers with three thousand pounds of tea in their boxes, wine merchants with three thousand bottles of rich and rare wines and six thousand bottles of inferior liquids, spirit dealers with puncheons of rum and brandy, confectioners, and poulterers with their stock of game and fowls almost innumerable, and all this for one outward and homeward voyage, notwithstanding that fresh provisions for the crew and passengers are taken on board at every foreign port which the steamer reaches. Cæsar's ghost would have been above all things astonished at seeing the engine department, so powerful, majestic, and shining like silver. Although it combines and condenses within the space of a breakfast parlour the energies of twelve hundred horses, yet a boy with one hand can stop the vast movement in a moment, and a bucketful of coals and of water carries away the whole three thousand tons over the stormiest ocean like a thing of nothing.

GOSSIP ON BOARD THE RIPON.

3

The Ripon steamer skimmed down the Channel with us like a sea-gull. The day was bright, and the passengers were glittering in fine linen as yet nothing soiled by the weather. For a time family circles clubbed by themselves, and every body looked inquiringly at his neighbour, as if to take cautious observation of the longitude and latitude of his rank and respectability. Gossip soon began its tittletattle. This young lady, beautiful and handsome, was certainly taking the overland route to India on a matrimonial speculation; and that lady and her intelligent companion, going to Hong Kong were married last week. He with the brown wig and white whiskers is a popish priest, on his way to Jerusalem, desirous to bury his bones in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. But soon the company began to mingle on deck, and to drink wine with one another at dinner, and to be merry friends all till the last sight of England, and seasickness, and the sleepless Bay of Biscay, made the landsmen rather humdrum for a day or two.

When more than two days out of the sight of land, and unmercifully tossed on the long rolling swell of the Atlantic, another sight of the shore becomes an interesting novelty to a passenger sea-sick and sick of the sea. But the land is more welcome to an Englishman, should it be a corner of Europe hallowed by events memorable both by field and flood, with battles interesting from our boyish recollections. My son had spent two miserable days in bed, but on the morning of the 23d of April, he came down from the deck to tell me that the coast of Spain and Corunna were within sight. I ran up the cabin stairs, when lo! over the port-bow the high hills and sunny plains of the Peninsula were looming not far distant, and Cape Finisterre was seen lowering far ahead,

4 SPAIN AND THE BATTLE-FIELD OF corunna.

mingling its dark outline with the blue wave below and the blue sky above. The battle-field about three miles above the harbour of Corunna was pointed out. The general face of this part of the country seemed to be composed of rock, with a scanty soil, and some small scattered clusters of pines like fox covers crowned the summit of the ridge. The British lines were said to have been posted on the secondary range, and a height half-a-mile above it was occupied by the French. My heart sank within me when I noticed that Soult's position commanded a point blank range of Sir John Moore's. The hamlet of Elvina was pointed out, the severest part of the battle-field, near which a battery was planted, which proved to be most destructive to our war-worn troops. I turned from the heart-rending scene with a tear in my eye, and chose rather to look at a solitary sea-fowl floating on the wave, and then flapping its wings through the shrouds. It gave me some satisfaction in my melancholy mood to observe crowds of majestic ships sweeping the horizon in every direction, and with the help of the captain's spyglass to read on their flags flying at the main that these were merchantmen belonging to my own country, or that this was a frigate the crew of which was paid partly out of my own pocket. We soon came up to the bold headland of Cape Finisterre, off which Sir Robert Calder captured the remaining French ships, which under Admiral Linois had escaped from the battle of Trafalgar.

On doubling the Cape, the town and harbour of Vigo rose into view. It was from this spot that the Spanish Armada sailed to fill Great Britain with Popery. But a wind arose, and sank their fleets. It was to Vigo that the English transports were sent to bring home the troops under the

VIGO AND SPANISH ARMADA.

5

command of Sir John Moore. But when it became apparent that Sir John could not reach Vigo, despatches were sent to have the transports brought round to Corunna. The important duty of carrying these was intrusted to a single dragoon, who got drunk by the way and lost his letter. Hence when the retreating army, wearied, hungry, and heart-broken, came within sight of the sea, there were no transports to be seen, and nothing else for it but to fight a severe battle with a proud foe, merely to gain a few hours existence on shore, and then to proclaim the miserable affair as a great victory. Just at the time when the despatches reached Vigo, a snoring breeze rose in the right direction, which brought the transports to Corunna with singular rapidity. And thus it was that on these seas the Almighty has twice favoured our country by the blowing of his mighty breath. Had these transports arrived in time, everybody would have got safe on board before the French came up. As it unfortunately happened, the delay served to add lustre to the British arms, and to restore whatever discipline might have been awanting among our troops from the extreme hardships of so long a forced march. But even this was bought too dear at the expense of the immortal Moore.

After a terrible night of wind and rain, thunder and lightning, daylight brought us to the skirts of Mondego Bay. Here the English troops landed on their second expedition to the Peninsula. Near this Vimeiro was pointed out, where Wellington fought his first battle, and above it along the ridge the famous lines of Torres Vedras were distinctly traced by the naked eye. And then Cintra, on the side of a sunny hill, presented every variety of the beautiful both in nature and in art. Rocks, cataracts, precipices, convents, and

ར་