n all ages, men have been eager to tell and to
hear new things; and before books were printed, travellers wandered
abroad, bringing home wonderful stories of unknown lands.
In the construction of this publication, the object is not to tell
stories or relate experiences, but to exhibit, by carefully taken
photographs, the great sights of the world as they exist to-day.
The art of teaching with pictures is very old. The ancient Egyptians
used emblems and designs to record the various incidents of their
history, traces of which are still found on obelisks and ruined
temples.
Wood illustrations were also introduced many years ago; and as
time rolled on, marked improvements were made in the art of
wood-engraving. Notwithstanding the fact that they have not the
power of truly representing the original objects they intend to
portray, they are still largely used for illustrating printed books
and papers.
Over a century ago, the art of photography was made known to the
world by Scheele, a Swedish chemist; since then, many improvements
have been made in this art, until now, by the photo-electro process,
an exact photograph can be transferred on a copper plate, without
losing a single line or shade, and from this plate, photographs
can be printed, such as appear in this book.
Owing to the increasing popularity of the graphic and pictorial
methods of imparting information, the photographic camera was employed
to secure photographs of the greatest things of the world as seen
to-day, both for instruction and entertainment.
We forget knowledge acquired by common conversation, and descriptions
of places and things; but when we observe them, and their forms
are conveyed to our minds through the medium of our eyes, they
are indelibly impressed upon the memory.
Page 4 The object,
then, of this Publication is to present photographs of all the
great sights of the world, from every corner of the globe, carefully
reproducing them by the photo-electro process, and adding a few lines
of explanation to every picture, so that any one can comprehend
each subject.
To make this collection, every country was carefully ransacked,
starting in Ireland, with the famous Blarney Castle and Lakes of
Killarney in the south, and extending to the Giant's Causeway in
the north, said by an old legend to have been built by giants to
form a road across the channel to Scotland.
Passing through Scotland, we photographed its hills, castles, lochs,
bridges and cities. Throughout Wales and England, we represent their
busy seaport and manufacturing towns; the home of Shakespeare,
the Bard of Avon; Windsor Castle, far-famed for its beauty and
battlements; Greenwich Observatory, from which the longitude of the
world is computed; Hampton Court, a relic of royalty; and London,
the metropolis of the world, with over six million people, its
crowded streets, imperial buildings, historic abbeys, famous towers
and monuments.
The Netherlands and Denmark are represented by the dykes and windmills,
Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, the battlefield
of Waterloo; Russia, the land of the Czar, by Moscow, The Kremlin;
St. Petersburg, the Winter Palace. Thence our photographers travelled
across the steppes to Lapland, Finland, Poland, and over the tundras
to sterile Siberia, inflicting its cruel tortures on unhappy exiled
prisoners.
Germany, that romantic country of northern Europe, affords Berlin;
Potsdam, its Royal Palaces; Dresden and its Picture Galleries;
Frankfort-on-the-Main, the former home of Luther, the reformer,
and Rothschild, the financial king of the world; the picturesque
Rhine, lined with its historic castles.
France furnishes for our collection Paris, the proudest city of the
whole world, ever gay, its pretty boulevards, monuments, towers,
bridges, historic buildings, the Louvre and Luxembourg Galleries,
and their treasures of painting and sculptures; Versailles, its
royal palaces, the largest in the world; the palace at Fontainbleau,
buried in the midst of that imperial forest, the home where Napoleon
ruled and abdicated; the cities of the interior and those of the
ever-delightful Riveria, from Marseilles to Monte Carlo, the latter
both lovely, hideous, serene, sensational, beautiful and damnable.
Page 5 Through Spain
and Portugal, every object of interest was photographed, from the
wild and thrilling scenery of the Pyrenees in the north to that
bold headland rock of Gibraltar in the south, and from the calm
Mediterranean in the east to the turbulent waters of the Atlantic
on the west.
Of Switzerland, we exhibit its snow-capped peaks of perpetual ice
and snow; Mont Blanc, Matterhorn and Jungfrau; its placid lakes;
mountain passes, like shelves cut in rock; its bridges of ice and
variety of wild scenery that is seen nowhere but in Switzerland.
Through sunny Italy we gathered photographs from lakes Lugano,
Maggiore and Como with perpetual spring, in the north, to the fiery
crater of Mount Vesuvius in the south; Venice, the "Queen of the
Adriatic;" Genoa, the home of Columbus; Pisa, its leaning tower;
Florence, the "flower of cities," with its galleries of statues
and paintings that the wealth of nations could not purchase; and
Rome, that mighty city by the Tiber, that once ruled the world,
and is still the abode of the Pope; St. Peters and its ruins; yet
now calm, peaceful and powerless.
Austria, where the Catholic bows his head to every shrine, favored
us with its sublime mountain scenery; the picturesque Tyrol; the
blue Danube, famous in history and song; and Vienna, the home of the
Emperor and the former abode of Maria Theresa, strangely fascinating
and unlike any other city in the whole world. Turkey, the land of
the Sultan and the followers of Mahomet, with its strange people
and curious habits, is represented by Constantinople, with its
mosques and minarets, from the top of which the Mussulman sings
out his daily calls for prayer, Ali! Ali!—there is but one
God, and Mahomet is his prophet; its streets, gates and squares;
the Bosphorus and Golden Horn.
Classic Greece, once the centre of art and learning, adorns our
collection with Athens, the Acropolis and Parthenon, the latter
almost completely and shamefully bereft of those famous marbles,
chiseled by Phidias nearly five hundred years before Christ.
In ancient Egypt we photographed the Suez Canal; Alexandria, the
former city of Cleopatra; Cairo, the home of the Khedive and his
harems; the Sphynx and Pyramids, the latter the tombs of the selected
Ptolemies; the river Nile, fed by the melting snows from the mountains
of the Moon, and pouring its waters over this ancient valley with
a regularity as though the ruined temples on its banks give it
command.
Page 6 Palestine,
the Holy Land, made famous in the history of the Christian Church,
added Jeruselem, the City of David; Bethlehem, the cradle of Christ;
Jordan, where He was baptized; the Sea of Galilee, on whose shores
He preached to the multitude; Nazareth, from which He was called
a Nazarene; Gethsemane, where He suffered; Calvary, where He was
crucified.
Asia furnished Mecca, that eternal city to which Mahomet's disciples
make their weary pilgrimages; Hindoostan, from Bombay to Calcutta;
the grottos of Illora; the caverns of Salcette; the Hindoo priests,
chanting the verses of the Vedas; the ruins of the city of the
great Bali, the domes of the pagodas; glacier views, snow bridges,
rattan bridges in the Himalayas; the sacred caves of Amurnath,
to which pilgrimages are made by the Hindoos; Srinugurr and its
floating gardens; curious bridges; bazaars for the sale of the
world-renowned Cashmere shawls, the winding river Jheulm, with
its many curves, suggesting the pattern or design for these famous
wraps; Darjeeling and Mussorie, celebrated hill sanitariums, in
the heart of the Himalayas, much frequented by tourists during
summer; Melapore, where St. Thomas was martyred and where Christ,
perhaps, lived during His absence from Judea, drawing from the
books of the Brahmins, the most perfect precepts of His divine
teachings; the subterranean caverns of Candy; the splendor of the
Valley of Rubies; Adam's Peak; the footmark of Buddha; the fairy-like
view of the Straits of Sunda.
Our photographers also traversed the Celestial Empire, South America,
Central America, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada and
the United States, from the Golden Gate in the west to the Rocky
Coast of New England in the east, and from the Lake Cities in the
north to the Cotton States in the south. Through every country and
every clime, north, south, east and west, wherever was located a
point of interest, an historic castle, a famous monument, a grand
cathedral, a world's wonder, a great city, a crowded avenue, an imperial
building, a pretty picture, an exquisite statue, a picturesque river,
an inspiring grandeur of nature, a curious cavern, a lofty peak, a
deep valley, a strange people, the same was reflected through the
camera and added to this book.
The result of this collection entailed therefore the expenditure
of a vast amount of money and labor, as may be supposed; and the
only wish of the publishers is, that it may afford pleasure and
instruction to those that view the result of their labors.
