For the Jewish chieftain going from Florus on a mission to the Emperor, as the captain conceived me and my purpose to be, a separate portion of the deck was kept sacred. But I mingled from time to time with the crowd, and thus contrived to preserve at once my respect and my popularity. Never was there a more miscellaneous collection. We transported into Europe a Chaldee sorcerer, an Indian gymnosophist, an Arab teacher of astrology, a Magian from Persepolis, and a Platonist from Alexandria. Such were our contributions to Oriental science. We had, besides, a dealer in sleight-of-hand from Damascus; an Egyptian with tame monkeys and a model of a pyramid; a Syrian serpent-teacher; an Idumean maker of amulets against storm and calm, thirst and hunger, and every other disturbance and distress of life; an Armenian discoverer of the stone by which gold-mines were to be found; a Byzantine inventor of the true Oriental pearls; a dealer from the Caspian in gums superseding all that Arabia ever wept; an Epicurean philosopher who professed indolence, and who, to do him justice, was a striking example of his doctrine; and a Stoic who, having gone his rounds of the Roman garrisons as a teacher of dancing, a curer of wines, and a flute-player, had now risen into the easier vocation of a philosopher. [Sidenote: Differences of Opinion] Of course, among these professors, the discoverer of gold was the most moneyless; the maker of amulets against misfortune the most miserable; and the Stoic the most impatient. The Epicurean alone adhered to the spirit of his profession. But the unstable elements round us were a severe trial for any human philosophy but that of a thorough optimist. Wind and water, the two most imperious of all things, were our masters; and a calm, a breeze, or even a billow, often tried our reasoners too roughly for the honor of tempers so saturated with wisdom. On those occasions the Platonist defended the antiquity of Egypt with double pertinacity; the Chaldee derided its novelty by the addition of a hundred thousand years to his chronology of Babylon; the Indian with increased scorn, wrinkling his brown visage, told them that both Babylon and Egypt were baubles of yesterday compared with the million years of India.