"The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged oriental-looking negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling his goat-skin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant Savior in the Virgin's arms, have stood upon it, may be.
"Near it are the ruins of a dock-yard where Caesar repaired his ships and loaded grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the Christian Era.
"Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."
P.63, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, by Mark Twain (Library of America, NY: 1984)
Thursday, May 29, 2014
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, EXCERPT..
"The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged oriental-looking negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling his goat-skin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant Savior in the Virgin's arms, have stood upon it, may be.
"Near it are the ruins of a dock-yard where Caesar repaired his ships and loaded grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the Christian Era.
"Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."
P.63, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, by Mark Twain (Library of America, NY: 1984)