From Damascus Mr. Taylor journeyed to Baalbec, where are the most imposing ruins to be found in Syria, and where stand six of the most symmetrical and exquisitely carved columns to be seen in Asia or Europe. He described the temples and fragments so vividly, that travellers who have taken his “Lands of the Saracen” for a guide have seldom been disappointed or mistaken in their anticipations, the actual scene they look upon being so like the image they formed in their minds while reading his description. The gift of portraying through the combination of words and sentences an accurate picture of a city existing in a strange land and amid a strange people, is a rare gift, and the number is very few of those who are found to possess it. Mr. Taylor was one of those privileged ones. In his description we see the columns, cornices, pediments, walls, platforms, broken pillars, and falling pavilions as distinctly as they appear when we afterwards look upon those romantic piles with the natural eye. To him, as to others, it was a study to determine, if possible, how such enormous blocks of stone, sixty-two feet long and ten feet in diameter, could have been transported and placed in the buildings. It is beyond all the skill of to-day to move nine thousand tons of stone in a single block with the conveniences of that time.

From Baalbec he ascended the Lebanon range of mountains, and looked over the land from the snowy peak of one of its lofty summits. He visited the sacred cedars which have lived on the mountain-side for three thousand years, and then rode on through chasms, along cliffs, and by the sweetest and richest dells, until he descended to the plain of Beyrout.

His appreciation of the hills of Lebanon is more clearly seen in his poetry than in his prose. For, when writing of them afterwards, he said:—

In that city he laid his plans for the future, and abandoned his purposed trip to the Euphrates and Tigris. He relinquished the design to visit Assyria with great reluctance, and decided to pass through the interior of Asia Minor to Constantinople. Acting immediately upon this resolution, without an apparent doubt of being able to traverse safely the unknown interior of Asia Minor, he engaged a vessel and sailed up the coast to the Orontes River, and thence to Aleppo. In that city, by a ludicrous mistake, Mr. Taylor and his travelling companion were invited to the house of one of the wealthiest merchants, and were treated with the greatest hospitality by the owner, who supposed they were titled Englishmen. But when the mistake was revealed, Mr. Taylor had become such an agreeable visitor that his host insisted upon entertaining them during their stay in Aleppo. He had been there but a few days before he became such a general favorite, that he was invited to call on the nobility, was urged to attend feasts, balls, and weddings, and when he left the city, the friendly regrets of hundreds of Moslems and Christians followed him.

Leaving Aleppo early in June, he followed the shore of the Mediterranean around to the plain of Issus, where Alexander the Great won his great victory, and thence to Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul. It may have been “no mean city” when Paul was born, but it was a most insignificant village when Mr. Taylor was there. But as the magnificent mountains of the Taurus range loomed up along the northern horizon, his attention was taken from rags, beggary, and ruined fortresses, to snowy cliffs, over which he had a passion for clambering.

Those persons who have ascended the Alps at the Simplon pass, have a very good idea of the Taurus mountains, and can realize somewhat of Mr. Taylor’s satisfaction as he rode up the gorges and peered into the deep valleys. He loved the mountains anywhere. But the Taurus seemed then, in the glow of his return to perfect health and with all the profusion of nature’s living beauties blooming about him, and the eternal snows gleaming above him, to be the most attractive landscape in the world.

His visit to Konia (Iconium), the capital of Karamania, was full of little episodes and personal incidents, which he told afterwards in print in his own inimitable manner. But nothing of unusual moment occurred until he reached ancient Phrygia, where the ruins of olden cities and fortresses interested him much. Their history was almost as unknown as the story of the temples of Yucatan, and consequently had a mysterious appearance which charms in a bewildering way the study of a poet.

Riding on over hills and mountains, across delightful streams, through fertile valleys, associating with the Turks on friendly terms, and studying their habits and language, Mr. Taylor pushed fearlessly into the very heart of Asia Minor. Visiting Oezani in its debris, and the valley of Rhyndacus, they traversed the primeval forests on the Mysian Olympus, and true to his instincts he sought the heights of Olympus, twin mountain, in size and literature, with its Grecian namesake. From that point to Brousa, near the Sea of Marmora, it was but a day’s journey, and seems to have been the most delightful ride of the whole tour. Gardens, orchards, grain-fields, thickets of clematis and roses, patches of beech and oak woodland, and brilliant streams pleased the eye, while the songs of birds and of happy harvesters charmed the ear. Grand mountains pierced the skies, covered with dense forests, behind them, and the plain stretched away—a Garden of Eden—to the shore of a placid inland sea.

They entered Brousa in excellent health and spirits, having seen no unusual fatigue and been in no great danger during the whole journey through a country then almost lost and unknown to the civilized world.

From Brousa, the party descended to the Sea of Marmora, and taking a sail-boat were wafted by the Golden Horn into the interminable fleets of Constantinople. During his stay in that city he witnessed the display of the Turkish holidays, saw the Sultan on his throne, entered the mosque of Saint Sophia, ran to the numerous conflagrations, and unravelled to his satisfaction some of the social and political problems connected with the Sultan’s rule and the state of popular discontent. He foretold a war with Russia, and a contest between the latter and England over the coveted gem of the East and the gate to the Black Sea. His predictions have already been proven to be true, showing an insight into political affairs wholly unlooked for in a young man, and not to be found in such as had travelled to less purpose.

On leaving Constantinople, he proceeded again to Smyrna, which place appeared to so much better advantage on his second visit than it did at his first, that instead of leaving it, as before, with anathemas, he celebrated his visit with a poem.

The reader may not need to be again reminded of Mr. Taylor’s double view of the scenes he visited, or of the fact that he tried to give faithful pictures of the present in his prose and left the ideal and fanciful to his books of poetry. But to understand his disposition, and correctly estimate his ability, they need to be read together; and hence, before taking leave of Asia Minor, we venture to quote a verse from a dedication to his friend Richard H. Stoddard, which we have seen in a volume of Mr. Taylor’s poems.

At Constantinople Mr. Taylor heard of the action which had been taken by the United States, looking to the opening of the ports of Japan to the commerce of America. He heard that a squadron was to leave the United States in November, under the command of Commodore Perry, and he formed the resolution to connect himself with the expedition, if possible. To that end he wrote to his friends and employers in New York, asking them to obtain permission for him to join the fleet. Not knowing just when the expedition would sail, nor at what ports it would stop on its way to Japan, he anxiously watched for information, and inquired at every place where information was likely to be found.

He was determined to visit Spain before he went to China and Japan, and was equally resolved to visit the home of his German travelling companion who ascended the Nile with him, and who had sent pressing invitations to him to come to Gotha.

The business details connected with his finances and outfit for Spain and China also called him to London, and arranging his tour so as to accomplish these diverse ends he visited Malta, where he was delayed ten days, and then sailed to Sicily, where he witnessed the Catanian centennial festival in honor of St. Agatha, and where he beheld the awful spectacle of Ætna in eruption. From Sicily he sailed up the coast to that Naples which, as a wayfarer in Rome seven years before, he had so much longed to see, and filled his letters with praises of its beautiful bay and charming circle of mountain, city, town, cliffs, and islands. Without changing steamers he proceeded to Leghorn, and going to Florence experienced that delight of all delights,—in Florence a second time. Feeling that his time was limited, and “drawn by an unseen influence,” he hastened on to Venice, and thence through the regions of the Austrian Tyrol to Munich and Gotha.

Gladsome days at Gotha! Was it not the country of his beloved friend? Was it not the home of his friend’s niece, Marie Hansen? The daughter of the great astronomer, Peter Andreas Hansen, was a worthy child of a noble sire. Mr. Taylor had listened to her praises, but had hardly hoped to meet her.

After a few weeks spent in and about that pleasant city, to which he was destined to return and claim his bride, and in which he was to pass many of the sweetest days of his life, he journeyed to London. There he made his arrangements for a trip into China, and hastened away to Gibraltar.

On the 6th of November he left the great rock and took passage in a steamer for Cadiz, in Spain. There he walked the streets three thousand years old, and wherein, it is said, that Hercules strode. Yet there is but little now to be seen that would remind one of antiquity. He noticed, however, the beautiful and graceful women. From Cadiz he went by boat up the Guadalquiver River to the pretty town of Seville. There were the old Moorish houses; there the massive Cathedral; there the Saracenic palace of Alcazar, with all its porches, galleries, arches, and sculptures; there was the palace called Pilate’s House, with its decorations from Arabia, and inscriptions from the Koran; and there was the museum containing Murillo’s best paintings.

But it requires only a short time to visit all the attractions of Seville, and Mr. Taylor soon proceeded to Granada. In nearly all the cities which he visited he was reminded, directly or indirectly, of the visit of his friend, Washington Irving. He found the same guides, or lodged at the same hotel, or visited some celebrated locality of which Irving had written.

In Granada was the celebrated fortress of Alhambra, which was captured from the Moors by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella the same year that Columbus discovered America; there was the palace of Charles V.; there the Carthusian convent, the Monastery of St. Geronimo, and there the cathedral with the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made a hasty trip to Cordova and its ancient Moslem mosque. Then, visiting Alhama, Malaga, and Ronda, he returned hastily to Gibraltar and examined the renowned fortress, said to be the strongest citadel in the world.

In that somewhat hasty view of Southern Spain he obtained much valuable information and an experience which often served him in his literary work as a writer for the public press. Southern Spain and Southern France, next to Rome itself, are replete with warlike and romantic associations. Gauls, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards, have made nearly every plain a battle-field; and the toppling walls of the ancient towers and palaces tell of the fiercest contests, the most terrible inquisitions, and the narrowest of narrow escapes. Song and story in prose and rhyme have combined in every form to make the land attractive, and it is a matter of deep regret that Mr. Taylor, who was so capable of developing all these characteristics, had not more time in which to visit them and write out his experience.