to be known. Pericles was one of the great men in the earlier history of
the old city. He made a sacred enclosure of the Acropolis and placed
there the masterpieces of Greece and other countries. The city is said
to have had a population of three hundred thousand in his day,
two-thirds of them being slaves. The names of Socrates, Demosthenes, and
Lycurgus also belong to the list of great Athenians. In 1040 the Normans
captured Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, and in 1455 the Turks,
commanded by Omar, captured the city. The Acropolis was occupied by the
Turks in 1826, but they surrendered the next year, and in 1839 Athens
became the seat of government of the kingdom of Greece. With Athens, my
sight-seeing on the continent ended. Other interesting and curious
sights were seen besides those mentioned here. For instance, I had
noticed a variety of fences. There were hedges, wire fences, fences of
stone slabs set side by side, frail fences made of the stalks of some
plant, and embryo fences of cactus growing along the railroad. In Italy,
I saw many white oxen, a red ox being an exception that seems seldom to
occur. I saw men hauling logs with oxen and a cart, the long timber
being fastened beneath the axle of the cart and to the beam of the yoke.
In Belgium, one may see horses worked three abreast and four tandem, and
in Southern France they were shifting cars in one of the depots with a
horse, and in France I also saw a man plowing with an ox and a horse
hitched together. Now the time had come to enter the Turkish Empire, and
owing to what I had previously heard of the Turk, I did not look forward
to it with pleasure.




CHAPTER III.