and many other jewels. One of the scepters is supposed to contain a part of the cross of Christ, but the supposition had no weight with me. One of the attendants told me the value of the whole collection was estimated at four million pounds, and that it would probably bring five times that much if sold at auction. As the English pound is worth about four dollars and eighty-seven cents, this little room contains a vast treasure—worth upwards of a hundred million dollars.

I will only mention Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, the Parliament Buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace, and the Zoological Gardens. I also visited the Bank of England, which "stands on ground valued at two hundred and fifty dollars per square foot. If the bank should ever find itself pressed for money, it could sell its site for thirty-two million seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars." It is a low building that is not noted for its beauty. If it were located in New York, probably one of the tall buildings characteristic of that city would be erected on the site.

The British Museum occupied my time for hours, and I shall not undertake to give a catalogue of the things I saw there, but will mention a few of them. There are manuscripts of early writers in the English tongue, including a copy of Beowulf, the oldest poem in the language; autograph works of Daniel De Foe, Ben Jonson, and others; the original articles of agreement between John Milton and Samuel Symmons relating to the sale of the copyright of "a poem entitled 'Paradise Lost.'" There was a small stone inscribed in Phoenician, with the name of Nehemiah, the son of Macaiah, and pieces of rock that were brought from the great temple of Diana at Ephesus; a fragment of the Koran; objects illustrating Buddhism in India; books printed by William Caxton, who printed the first book in English; and Greek vases dating back to 600 B.C. In the first verse of the twentieth chapter of Isaiah we have mention of "Sargon, the king of Assyria." For centuries this was all the history the world had of this king, who reigned more than seven hundred years before Christ. Within recent times his history has been dug up in making excavations in the east, and I saw one of his inscribed bricks and two very large, human-headed, winged bulls from a doorway of his palace.

The carvings from the palace of Sennacherib, tablets from the library of Asur-Banipal, and brick of Ur-Gur, king of Ur about twenty-five centuries before Christ, attracted my attention, as did also the colossal left arm of a statue of Thotmes III., which measures about nine feet. The Rosetta stone, by which the Egyptian hieroglyphics were translated, and hundreds of other objects were seen. In the mummy-room are embalmed bodies, skeletons, and coffins that were many centuries old when Jesus came to earth, some of them bearing dates as early as 2600 B.C., and in the case of a part of a body found in the third pyramid the date attached is 3633 B.C. Being weary, I sat down, and my note book contains this entry: "1:45 P.M., August 20. Resting here in the midst of mummies and sarcophagi thousands of years old."

From the top of the Monument I took a bird's-eye view of the largest of all earthly cities, or at least I looked as far as the smoky atmosphere would permit, and then returned to my stopping place at Twynholm. As I rode back on the top of an omnibus, the houses of one of the Rothschild family and the Duke of Wellington were pointed out. My sight-seeing in Scotland and England was now at an end, and the journey so far had been very enjoyable and highly profitable. I packed up and went down to Harwich, on the English Channel, where I embarked on the Cambridge for Antwerp, in Belgium. In this chapter I have purposely omitted reference to my association with the churches, as that will come up for consideration in another chapter.

CHAPTER II.

CROSSING EUROPE.

Immediately after my arrival in Antwerp I left for a short trip over the border to Rosendaal, Holland, where I saw but little more than brick-houses, tile roofs, and wooden shoes. I then returned to Antwerp, and went on to Brussels, the capital of Belgium. The battlefield of Waterloo is about nine and a half miles from Brussels, and I had an enjoyable trip to this notable place. The field is farming land, and now under cultivation. The chief object of interest is the Lion Mound, an artificial hill surmounted by the figure of a large lion. The mound is ascended by about two hundred and twenty-three steps, and from its summit one has a good view of the place where the great Napoleon met his defeat on the fifteenth of June, 1815. There is another monument on the field, which, though quite small and not at all beautiful, contains an impressive inscription. It was raised in memory of Alexander Gordon, an aide to the Duke of Wellington, and has the following words carved on one side: "A disconsolate sister and five surviving brothers have erected this simple memorial to the object of their tenderest affection."

From Brussels I went over to Aix-la-Chapelle, on the frontier of Germany, where I spent but little time and saw nothing of any great interest to me. There was a fine statue of Wilhelm I., a crucifixion monument, and, as I walked along the street, I saw an advertisement for "Henry Clay Habanna Cigarren," but not being a smoker, I can not say whether they were good or not. In this city I had an amusing experience buying a German flag. I couldn't speak "Deutsch," and she couldn't speak English, but we made the trade all right.

My next point was Paris, the capital of the French Republic, and here I saw many interesting objects. I first visited the church called the Madeleine. I also walked along the famous street Champs Elysees, visited the magnificent Arch of Triumph, erected to commemorate the victories of Napoleon, and viewed the Eiffel Tower, which was completed in 1889 at a cost of a million dollars. It contains about seven thousand tons of metal, and the platform at the top is nine hundred and eighty-five feet high. The Tomb of Napoleon is in the Church of the Invalides, one of the finest places I had visited up to that time. The spot where the Bastile stood is now marked by a lofty monument. The garden of the Tuileries, Napoleon's palace, is one of the pretty places in Paris. Leaving this city in the morning, I journeyed all day through a beautiful farming country, and reached Pontarlier, in southern France, for the night.

My travel in Switzerland, the oldest free state in the world, was very enjoyable. As we were entering the little republic, in which I spent two days, the train was running through a section of country that is not very rough, when, all in a moment, it passed through a tunnel overlooking a beautiful valley, bounded by mountains on the opposite side and presenting a very pleasing view. There were many other beautiful scenes as I journeyed along, sometimes climbing the rugged mountain by a cog railway, and sometimes riding quietly over one of the beautiful Swiss lakes. I spent a night at lovely Lucerne, on the Lake of the Four Cantons, the body of water on which William Tell figured long ago. Lucerne is kept very clean, and presents a pleasing appearance to the tourist.

I could have gone to Fluelin by rail, but preferred to take a boat ride down the lake, and it proved to be a pleasant and enjoyable trip. The snow could be seen lying on the tops of the mountains while the flowers were blooming in the valleys below. Soon after leaving Fluelin, the train entered the St. Gothard Tunnel and did not reach daylight again for seventeen minutes. This tunnel, at that time the longest in the world, is a little more than nine miles in length. It is twenty-eight feet wide, twenty-one feet high, lined throughout with masonry, and cost eleven million four hundred thousand dollars. Since I