CHAPTER VII

y Constantinople y Ephesus

READERS of The Innocents Abroad may recall that the
Quaker City landed at Marseilles and that Mark Twain
and his special little group went to Paris, later to Genoa,
then by rail through Italy to Milan, Venice, Florence and
the rest, joining the ship again at Naples. Unhappily, the
notes of this period are lost. We shall never know just
what memoranda he made on the spot of the doings of
Dan and Jack, and of the guide-baiting "Doctor" whose
eternal and devastating inquiry, "Is—is he dead?" made
eager guides lose heart and shrivel, and caused him to be
remembered the length of the Peninsula during many
years.

The next existing notebook begins with Seba Smith's
stately "Burial of Moses," a poem whose lofty wording
and majestic imagery had no small influence on Mark
Twain's work. He frequently recited two stanzas from it,
and now in view of the coming Holy Land trip set them
down in full.

By Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,

There lies a lonely grave.
And no man knows that sepulchre,

And no man saw it e'er,
For the angels of God upturned the sod

And laid the dead man there.