hey passed quite
close to me and, although I had never seen His Majesty before, I was bold
enough to raise my hat to him; he observed my salute and most affably
returned it. I thought him looking extremely well.

The Kaiser landed at the Passeggiata Aretusa, a promenade that runs under
shady trees between the Great Harbour and the cliff on which the city is
built. It leads south to a garden, and further progress appears to be
blocked by a buttress of the cliff; but the buttress is pierced by a
tunnel, through which a path leads to another garden lying in an
enclosure protected from the harbour by a wall which encircles it; the
wall slopes down and on the top of it runs a path up which one can walk
and so enter the town without returning through the tunnel.

In this enclosure is the famous Fontana Aretusa, but there is nothing
about it that reminds one of the fountains of the Crystal Palace or of
Versailles. One first catches sight of a pond and then of a spring
bubbling into it with irresistible volubility at the north end; at the
south end the water tumbles out into the harbour through a hole in the
sea wall. The surface of the pond is below the level of the passeggiata
and probably the bed of it is below the level of the water in the
harbour, so that, as Cicero observed, it is the wall that keeps out the
waves and if the hole had been pierced lower the pond would be submerged
by the sea. On the sides of the cliff and on the wall grow plants with
aromatic leaves and flowers, and one can walk round the pond and watch
the fish which are, or ought to be, the descendants of those which Cicero
saw, as they swim about among the roots of Ptolemy's papyrus. The water
is not now used for washing, but I suspect that the Sidonian woman who
stole the little Eumaeus was so using it, for she was washing near the
ship of her countrymen when they got into conversation with her, and
their ship would be moored in the Great Harbour, close by the fountain.

I drank of this water, following the example of all visitors and of many
of the inhabitants who believe it to produce a beneficial effect upon the
digestion. It may have been good enough for Nelson, and I trust that the
digestions of his sailors derived benefit from it--anyhow, they had
victory at the battle of the Nile--but for a modern Londoner, accustomed
to do business with the Metropolitan Water Board, it is too salt, which
is perhaps why the papyrus here looks less flouri