the hill on which the rich trader
whose ground it is has built a bench, on which he can sit and look out
across his waving corn-fields.

"To Europe!" cry the young sons of America; "to the land of our
ancestors, the glorious land of monuments and fancy--to Europe!"

The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers, for the
transit is quicker than by sea. The electro-magnetic wire under the
ocean has already telegraphed the number of the aerial caravan. Europe
is in sight: it is the coast of Ireland that they see, but the
passengers are still asleep; they will not be called till they are
exactly over England. There they will first step on European shore, in
the land of Shakespeare as the educated call it; in the land of
politics, the land of machines, as it is called by others.

Here they stay a whole day. That is all the time the busy race can
devote to the whole of England and Scotland. Then the journey is
continued through the tunnel under the English Channel, to France, the
land of Charlemagne and Napoleon. Moliere is named: the learned men
talk of the classic school of remote antiquity: there is rejoicing and
shouting for the names of heroes, poets, and men of science, whom our
time does not know, but who will be born after our time in Paris, the
crater of Europe.

The air steamboat flies over the country whence Columbus went forth,
where Cortez was born, and where Calderon sang dramas in sounding
verse. Beautiful black-eyed women live still in the blooming valleys,
and the oldest songs speak of the Cid and the Alhambra.

Then through the air, over the sea, to Italy, where once lay old,
everlasting Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna lies desert: a single
ruined wall is shown as the remains of St. Peter's, but there is a
doubt if this ruin be genuine.

Next to Greece, to sleep a night in the grand hotel at the top of
Mount Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is
continued to the Bosphorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the
place where Byzantium lay; and where the legend tells that the harem
stood in the time of the Turks, poor fishermen are now spreading their
nets.

Over the remains of mighty cities on the broad Danube, cities which we
in our time know not, the travellers pass; but here and there, on the
rich sites of those that time shall bring forth, the caravan sometimes
descends, and departs thence again.

Down below lies Germany, that was once covered with a close n