The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander

The story told in this book is based upon legendary history, and the statements on which it is founded appear in the chronicles of Abou-djafar Mohammed Tabari. This historian was the first Mussulman to write a general history of the world. He was born in the year 244 of the Hejira (838-839 A.D.), and passed a great part of his life in Bagdad, where he studied and taught theology and jurisprudence. His chronicles embrace the history of the world, according to his lights, from the creation to the year 302 of the Hejira.

In these chronicles Tabari relates some of the startling experiences of El Khoudr, or El Kroudhr, then Vizier of that great monarch, the Two-Horned Alexander, and these experiences furnish the motive for those subsequent adventures which are now related in this book.

Some writers have confounded the Two-Horned Alexander with Alexander the Great, but this is an inexcusable error. References in ancient histories to the Two-Horned Alexander describe him as a great and powerful potentate, and place him in the time of Abraham. Mr. S. Baring-Gould, in his "Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets," states that, after a careful examination, he has come to the conclusion that some of the most generally known legends which have come down to us through the ages are based on incidents which occurred in the reign of this monarch.

The hero of this story now deems it safe to speak out plainly without fear of evil consequences to himself, and his confidence in our high civilization is a compliment to the age.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I lent large sums to the noble knights

"Don't you do it"

His wife was a slender lady

"Time of Abraham!" I exclaimed

Moses asked embarrassing questions

An encounter with Charles Lamb

I cut that picture from its frame

When we left Cordova

I had been a broker in Pompeii

Solomon and the Jinns

"Go tell the queen"

She gave me her hand, and I shook it heartily

Asking all sorts of questions

And roughly told me

She turned her head

"How like!"

I proceeded to dig a hole

"Why are you not in the army?"

Nebuchadnezzar and the gardener

Petrarch and Laura

The crouching African fixed her eyes upon him

THE VIZIER OF THE TWO-HORNED ALEXANDER

I

I was on a French steamer bound from Havre to New York, when I had a peculiar experience in the way of a shipwreck. On a dark and foggy night, when we were about three days out, our vessel collided with a derelict--a great, heavy, helpless mass, as dull and colorless as the darkness in which she was enveloped. We struck her almost head on, and her stump of a bowsprit was driven into our port bow with such tremendous violence that a great hole--nobody knew of what dimensions--was made in our vessel.

The collision occurred about two hours before daylight, and the frightened passengers who crowded the upper deck were soon informed by the officers that it would be necessary to take to the boats, for the vessel was rapidly settling by the head.

Now, of course, all was hurry and confusion. The captain endeavored to assure his passengers that there were boats enough to carry every soul on board, and that there was time enough for them to embark quietly and in order. But as the French people did not understand him when he spoke in English, and as the Americans did not readily comprehend what he said in French, his exhortations were of little avail. With such of their possessions as they could carry, the people crowded into the boats as soon as they were ready, and sometimes before they were ready; and while there was not exactly a panic on board, each man seemed to be inspired with the idea that his safety, and that of his family, if he had one, depended upon precipitate individual action.