Cities of the Dawn Naples - Athens - Pompeii - Constantinople - Smyrna - Jaffa - Jerusalem - Alexandria - Cairo - Marseilles - Avignon - Lyons - Dijon

To leave London one day and to arrive in Marseilles the next would have been deemed impossible—the dream of a madman—in the age in which I was born, when steamships and railways were unknown. Yet it is a fact, to the truth of which I can testify. Half a century has elapsed since the fair fields, leafy woodlands, and breezy chalk downs of Kent were invaded by a band of navvies, who, under the skilful direction of the late Sir William Cubitt, built up the main line of the South-Eastern Railway. The next thing was to connect France and Europe, which was done by means of steamers running between Calais and Dover, and thence by rail to all the chief Continental cities and health resorts.