An amusing incident closed this part of my journey. I went from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, and was astonished to find the town in the wildest commotion. Troops were at the docks, and the moment I landed I observed that the greatest interest was taken in me. At last, as they saw me walking about alone, one of the officials came up and said: "Why, are you alone?" "Of course," I replied. "Did you expect me to bring an army with me?" I said this in jest, not knowing how closely it touched his question. He then took me aside and said, "Read this despatch." I opened the despatch and read: "Train is on the Hunt." I saw what it meant, and how the good people had been deceived. The Hunt was the vessel I came on, and the telegraph operator at Seattle, knowing that I had been with the Fenians and had been stirring up a good deal of trouble in California, thought he would have some fun with the Canadians. The people of Victoria were on the lookout for me to arrive with a gang of Fenians! I did not smile, but determined to carry the joke a little further. Walking into the telegraph office, I filed the following cablegram for Dublin, Ireland. "Down England, up Ireland." The jest cost me $40 in tolls, but I enjoyed it that much. CHAPTER XXV THE SHARE I HAD IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 1870 My participation in the Commune in France, in the year '70, was the result of chance. I arrived at Marseilles at a very critical time in the history of that city. It was the hour when the Commune, or, as it was styled there by many, the "Red Republic," was born. I was on a tour of the world, the voyage in which I eclipsed all former feats of travel, and circled the globe in eighty days. This served Jules Verne, two years later, as the groundwork for his famous romance Around the World in Eighty Days. The whole journey had been eventful, but I shall write of that in a later chapter. The French Empire had fallen and the Republic had risen within the period of my swift flight; and now one of the darkest and most desperate enterprises known in history was afoot--the attempt to transform France and the world into a system of "communes," erected upon the ruins of all national governments. I arrived at Marseilles on the Donai, of the Imperial Messagerie line, October 20, '70, and went at once to the Grand Hotel de Louvre. Imagine my astonishment when I was received there by a delegation, and, for the third time, hailed as "liberator." The empty title of liberator--so easily conferred by the excitable Latin races--had become rather a joke with me. The Australian revolutionists who wanted to make me President of their paper republic, were in earnest, and would have done something notable, had they ever got the opportunity, with sufficient men behind them; but the Italians I had not felt much confidence in, nor had I any desire to work for their cause.