59

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 433

like madmen, reminding one of scenes that sometimes occur at our own old
fashioned camp meetings.

It is not within the scope and purpose of this supplement of my story to
give an extended account of my travels or to tell of all I have seen and heard
and felt. I had strange dreams of travel even in my boyhood days. I thought
I should some day see many of the famous places of which I heard men
speak, and or which I read even while a slave. During my visit to England,
as I have before said, I had a strong desire to go to France and should have
done so but for a Mr. George M. Dallas, who was then minister to England,
He refused to give me a passport on the ground that I was not and could not
be an American citizen. This man is now dead and generally forgotten as I
shall be; but I have lived to see myself recognized everywhere as an
American citizen. In view of my disappointment and the repulse I met with
at the hands of this American Minister, my gratification was all the more
intense that I was not only permitted to visit France and see something of life
in Paris; to walk the streets of that splendid city and spend days and weeks
in her charming art Galleries, but to extend my tour to other lands and visit
other cities; to look upon Egypt; to stand on the summit of its highest
Pyramid; to walk among the ruins of old Memphis; to gaze into the dead eyes
of Pharaoh; to feel the smoothness or granite tombs polished by Egyptian
workmen three thousand years ago; to see the last remaining obelisk of
Heliopolis; to view the land of Goshen; to sail on the bosom of the Nile; to
pass in sight of Crete, looking from the deck or our steamer perhaps as it did
when Paul saw it on the voyage to Rome eighteen hundred years ago; to walk
among the marble ruins of the Acropolis; to stand upon Mars Hill, where
Paul preached; to ascend Lycabettus and over look the plains of Marathon,
the garden of Plato, and the rock where Demosthenes declaimed against the
breezes of the sea; to gaze upon the Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the
Temple of Wingless Victory, and the Theater of Dionysius. To think that I,
once a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland, was experiencing all this was
well calculated to intensify my feeling of good fortune by reason of contrast,
if nothing more. A few years back my Sundays were spent on the banks of
the Chesapeake Bay, bemoaning my condition and looking out from the farm
of Edward Covey, and, with a heart aching to be on their decks, watching the
white sails of the ships passing off to sea. Now I was enjoying what the wis-
est and best of the world have bestowed for the wisest and best to enjoy.

Touching at Naples, we returned to Rome, where the longer one stays
the longer one wants to stay. No place is better titted to withdraw one from
the noise and bustle of modern life and fill one's soul with solemn reflections