orner, a family, crowded out, had been living for weeks under
a structure of horrible rags. Smoke, issuing from a dozen seams, gave
their home the look of a smouldering manure heap.

V

You probably know there are place-names which, when whispered
privately, have the unreasonable power of translating the spirit east
of the sun and west of the moon. They cannot be seen in print without a
thrill. The names in the atlas which do that for me are a motley lot,
and you, who see no magic in them, but have your own lunacy in another
phase, would laugh at mine. Celebes, Acapulco, Para, Port Royal,
Cartagena, the Marquesas, Panama, the Mackenzie River, Tripoli of
Barbary. They are some of mine. Rome should be there, I know, and
Athens, and Byzantium. But they are not, and that is all I can say
about it.

Why give reasons for our preferences? How often have our preferences
any reason? Maybe some old scoundrel of an ancestor who made a fortune
(all lost since) as a thief on the Spanish main, whispers Panama to me
when my mind is tired. Others may make magic with Ostend, Biarritz, or
Ancoats; and they are just as lucky as the man who obtains the spell by
looking at the Dry Tortugas on the map.

When I set out from Newport on this voyage, I did not expect to see
Tripoli of Barbary. We have never considered the possibility that our
favourite place-names really do stand for stones that have veritable
shapes and smells under a sun which comes and goes daily. Nor was my
steamer exactly the sort of craft which could, by the look of her, ever
attain to the coast of Barbary. What would a steamer know about it? She
would never fetch the landfall of a dream. I was not surprised,
therefore, when she fetched Tripoli quite wrong; not the place at all
for which I was looking on the southern horizon. But then, she was but
taking crockery there, in crates; and crockery is less vulnerable, is
rough freight, compared to a fancy. The crockery, however, got to its
Tripoli quite safely.

We anchored; and there was Tripoli, standing round a little bay, with
its buildings, variously coloured, crowded to the west, and slender
minarets standing as masts over the flat decks of the houses. I landed
at a narrow water-gate, and the Turkish officials regarded me as though
I had come to remove the country. When I wished to embark again, these
curious people in uniform were even more serious than when I arrived.
After a long hesitation, permission was gi