The Innocents Abroad


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But bad news came. The commandant of the Piraeus came in his boat, and  
said we must either depart or else get outside the harbor and remain  
imprisoned in our ship, under rigid quarantine, for eleven days! So we  
took up the anchor and moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so, taking  
in supplies, and then sail for Constantinople. It was the bitterest  
disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in sight of  
the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting Athens!  
Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the  
circumstances.  
All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and  
glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky ridge" was the  
Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum Hill,  
and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became heated, and  
party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon a  
hill which they said was the one St. Paul preached from, and another  
faction claimed that that hill was Hymettus, and another that it was  
Pentelicon! After all the trouble, we could be certain of only one  
thing--the square-topped hill was the Acropolis, and the grand ruin that  
crowned it was the Parthenon, whose picture we knew in infancy in the  
school books.  
We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether there were  
guards in the Piraeus, whether they were strict, what the chances were of  
capture should any of us slip ashore, and in case any of us made the  
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386 387 388 389 390

Quick Jump
1 187 374 560 747