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Chapter 34:
Grant as a traveler.
Grant was undoubtedly the greatest traveler that ever lived.
Not of course, the greatest discoverer or explorer, though he was admitted to probably more secret and exclusive recesses and haunts than any other one man; but he also visited more countries and saw more people, from
Kings down to lackeys and slaves, than anybody who ever journeyed on this earth before.
Others, of course, have made the tour around the globe;
the Prince of
Wales did something of that sort; but he went not so far and saw only the upper strata of society; others have had triumphal processions; some have ascended higher mountains or penetrated nearer to Ethiopia; but no other man was ever received by both peoples and sovereigns, by savans and merchants, by
Presidents and
Governor-Generals, by Tycoons and Sultans and Khedives, and school children and work-people and statesmen, like
Grant.
For him the Pyramids had a special door, and
Memphis and
Thebes were thrown open as to a successor of the Pharaohs; for him the
Pope dispensed with the usual etiquette and welcomed a Protestant and a democrat who did not kneel.
With him the
King of
Siam contracted a personal friendship and kept up a correspondence afterward; while the Emperors of
Russia and
Germany and
Japan, the Viceroy of
India and the Magnates of
Cuba and
Canada and
Mexico talked politics to him and religion from their own several standpoints.
The greatest potentates of earth laid aside their rules and showed
