Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/471

 *played in the place, but I should say the number was far above ten thousand. Some of the bodies were of infants, some of old men, some of young girls, some of priests. I had never before seen anything like it, nor did I know any such thing existed in Palermo or elsewhere Then we went to the royal palace, built in 1132, and which is occupied once or twice in a decade by the King of Italy and his family. We went into the private rooms of the king and queen, and saw their beds, and their baths; we saw the kitchen, and dining-room, as well as the state apartments. And all the palace attendants were very respectful to our old guide; he was permitted to roam about with us without restraint. Once, when he wanted to show us a certain apartment, he took a key out of a private drawer, and we walked a long way down one of the battlements to a tower where the room was But the best thing we saw during the day was the chapel of the old palace. It was a wonderful piece of art work, the entire interior being covered with valuable paintings and more valuable mosaic work. This chapel was in the class of the wonders to be seen in India. We visited it twice, and both times services were in progress. As we had done at the cathedral, the guide conducted us among the kneeling worshipers, and he knew every priest and monk he encountered, and they all spoke to him respectfully. I don't believe I have ever seen anything that attracted me more than this chapel, built in the eleventh century. The interior is of marble, and the decorations of mosaic work laid in designs cut in the marble At 1 we rested at a little hotel on the side of the mountain over