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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp's Notebook, by Morley Roberts
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Tramp's Notebook
+
+Author: Morley Roberts
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2008 [EBook #25190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAMP'S NOTEBOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A TRAMP'S NOTE-BOOK
+
+BY
+
+MORLEY ROBERTS
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"RACHEL MARE," "BIANCA'S CAPRICE," "THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL."
+
+
+LONDON
+
+F. V. WHITE & CO. LTD.
+
+14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO                     1
+
+SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES                                  16
+
+A PONDICHERRY BOY                                         40
+
+A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS                                    51
+
+MY FRIEND EL TORO                                         61
+
+BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST                                   71
+
+A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON                                79
+
+IN CAPETOWN                                               88
+
+VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE                                  95
+
+NEAR MAFEKING                                            101
+
+BY THE FRASER RIVER                                      110
+
+OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA                     118
+
+A TALK WITH KRUGER                                       128
+
+TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA         136
+
+ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE                                 142
+
+BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS                                    162
+
+IN CORSICA                                               167
+
+ON THE MATTERHORN                                        176
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS                      186
+
+AT LAS PALMAS                                            194
+
+THE TERRACINA ROAD                                       204
+
+A SNOW-GRIND                                             216
+
+ACROSS THE BIDASSOA                                      230
+
+ON A VOLCANIC PEAK                                       238
+
+SHEEP AND SHEEP HERDING                                  244
+
+RAILROAD WARS                                            256
+
+AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS                                     263
+
+TRAMPS                                                   267
+
+TEXAS ANIMALS                                            275
+
+IN A SAILORS' HOME                                       282
+
+THE GLORY OF THE MORNING                                 293
+
+
+
+
+A Tramp's Note-Book
+
+
+
+
+A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+How much bitter experience a man keeps to himself, let the experienced
+say, for they only know. For my own part I am conscious that it rarely
+occurs to me to mention some things which happened either in England or
+out of it, and that if I do, it is only to pass them over casually as
+mere facts that had no profound effect upon me. But the importance of
+any hardship cannot be estimated at once; it has either psychological or
+physiological sequelæ, or both. The attack of malaria passes, but in
+long years after it returns anew and devouring the red blood, it breaks
+down a man's cheerfulness; a night in a miasmic forest may make him for
+ever a slave in a dismal swamp of pessimism. It is so with starvation,
+and all things physical. It is so with things mental, with
+degradations, with desolation; the scars and more than scars remain:
+there is outward healing, it may be, but we often flinch at mere
+remembrance.
+
+But time is the vehicle of philosophy; as the years pass we learn that
+in all our misfortunes was something not without value. And what was of
+worth grows more precious as our harsher memories fade. Then we may bear
+to speak of the days in which we were more than outcasts; when we
+recognised ourselves as such, and in strange calm and with a broken
+spirit made no claim on Society. For this is to be an outcast indeed.
+
+I came to San Francisco in the winter of 1885 and remained in that city
+for some six months. What happened to me on broad lines I have written
+in the last chapter of _The Western Avernus_. But nowadays I know that
+in that chapter I have told nothing. It is a bare recital of events with
+no more than indications of deeper miseries, and some day it may chance
+to be rewritten in full. That I was of poor health was nothing, that I
+could obtain no employment was little, that I came to depend on help was
+more. But the mental side underlying was the worst, for the iron
+entered into my soul. I lost energy. I went dreaming. I was divorced
+from humanity.
+
+America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who
+would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan
+element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives
+rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures
+without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all
+other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the
+unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a
+lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which
+carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The
+rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms
+which precedes their welding, the beginning of socialism, is the father
+of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In
+what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent,
+hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there
+now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man
+for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace the legend on
+the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it
+in his heart.
+
+But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of
+the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds
+good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the
+American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his
+biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek
+in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only
+poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of
+the hardest, if not _the_ hardest city in the world. Speaking from my
+own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand
+miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even
+excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is
+the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed
+different.
+
+I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one
+shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on
+boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time
+embittered me. On the third day I saw some of my equal outcasts
+inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading
+it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a
+street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At
+the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving
+who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving
+only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was
+bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.
+
+But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in
+melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one
+but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of
+sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service.
+I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I
+found the place half full of out-o'-works, and sat down by the door. The
+preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked
+like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and
+benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say
+he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking,
+and about thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about
+him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.
+
+But I returned.
+
+I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in
+everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false
+pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that
+insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me
+have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place
+on the earth.
+
+But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by
+way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me.
+Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected
+this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at
+a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for
+the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious
+types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a
+morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but
+my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a
+well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told
+stories well, and filled a church every night for ten days. During
+these days I heard him attentively, as I might have listened to any
+well-told lecture on any pseudo-science. But my intellect was
+unconvinced, my conscience untouched, and Scott gave me up. I attended a
+number of services by myself; I was lonely, poor, hopeless, living an
+inward life. The subjective became real at times, the objective faded. I
+had a little occasional work, and expected some money to reach me early
+in the year. But I had no energy, I divided my time between the Free
+Library and churches. And it drew on to Christmas.
+
+It was a miserable time of rain, and Christmas Day found me hopeless of
+a meal. But by chance I came across a man whom I had fed, and he
+returned my hospitality by dining me for fifteen cents at the "What
+Cheer House," a well-known poor restaurant in San Francisco. Then
+followed some days of more than semi-starvation, and I grew rather
+light-headed. The last day of the year dawned and I spent it foodless,
+friendless, solitary. But after a long evening's aimless wandering about
+the city I came back to California Street, and at ten o'clock went to
+the Watch-Night Service in the room of the first preacher I had heard.
+
+The hall was a big square one, capable of seating some three hundred
+people. There was a raised platform at the end; a broad passage way all
+round the room had seats on both sides of it, and made a small square of
+seats in the centre. I sat down in the middle of this middle square, and
+the room was soon nearly full. The service began with a hymn. I neither
+sang nor rose, and I noticed numbers who did not. In peculiar isolation
+of mind my heart warmed to these, and I was conscious of rising
+hostility for the creatures of praise. There was one strong young fellow
+about three places from me who remained seated. Glancing behind the
+backs of those who were standing between us I caught his eye, which met
+mine casually and perhaps lightened a little. He had a rather fine face,
+intelligent, possibly at better times humorous. I was not so solitary.
+
+A man singing on my left offered me a share of his hymn-book. I declined
+courteously. The woman on my right asked me to share hers. That I
+declined too. Some asked the young fellow to rise, but he refused
+quietly. Yet I noticed some of those who had remained seated gave in to
+solicitations or to the sound or to some memory, and rose. Yet many
+still remained. They were all men, and most of them young.
+
+After the hymn followed prayer by the minister, who was surrounded on
+the daïs by some dozen girls. I noticed that few were very good-looking;
+but in their faces was religious fervour. Yet they kept their eyes on
+the man. The prayer was long, intolerably and trickily eloquent and
+rhetorical, very self-conscious. The man posed before the throne. But I
+listened to every word, half absorbed though I was in myself. He was
+followed in prayer by ambitious and emotional people in the seats. One
+woman prayed for those who would not bow the knee. Once more a hymn
+followed, "Bringing home the sheaves."
+
+The air is not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it
+tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of
+voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to
+move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left
+did not. The sermon followed, and I felt as if I had escaped a
+humiliation.
+
+What the preacher said I cannot remember, nor is it of any importance.
+He was not an intellectual man, nor had he many gifts beyond his rather
+sleek manner and a soft manageable voice. He was obviously proud of
+that, and reckoned it an instrument of success. It became as monotonous
+to me as the slow oily swell of a tropic sea in calm. I would have
+preferred a Boanerges, a bitter John Knox. The intent of his sermon was
+the usual one at such periods; this was the end of the year, the
+beginning was at hand. Naturally he addressed himself to those who were
+not of his flock; it seemed to me, as it doubtless seemed to others,
+that he spoke to me directly.
+
+The custom of mankind to divide time into years has had an effect on us,
+and we cannot help feeling it. Childhood does not understand how
+artificial the portioning of time is; the New Year affects us even when
+we recognise the fact. It required no florid eloquence of the preacher
+to convince me of past folly and weakness; but it was that weakness that
+made me weak now in my allowing his insistence on the New Year to affect
+me. I was weak, lonely, foolish. Oh, I acknowledged I wanted help! But
+could I get help here?
+
+It was past eleven when they rose to sing another hymn. Many who had not
+sung before sang now. Some of the girls from the platform came down and
+offered us hymn-books. A few took them half-shamefacedly; some declined
+with thanks; some ignored the extended book. And after two hymns were
+sung and some more prayers said, it was half-past eleven. They announced
+five minutes for silent meditation. Looking round, I saw my friend on
+the left sitting with folded arms. He was obviously in no need of five
+minutes.
+
+In the Free Library I had renewed much of my ancient scientific reading,
+and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to
+explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I
+was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked
+myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how
+the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature
+could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the
+intellect by the force of his own personality. But all the same the
+hour, the time, and the song followed by silence, and the silence by
+song, affected me and affected many. What had I to look forward to when
+I went out into the street? And if I yielded they might, nay would, help
+me to work. I laughed a little at myself, and was scornful of my
+thoughts. They were singing again.
+
+This time the band of women left the daïs and in a body went slowly
+round and round the aisle isolating the centre seats from the platform
+and the sides. From the platform the preacher called on the others to
+rise and join them, for it was nearly twelve o'clock, the New Year was
+at hand. Most of the congregation obeyed him, I counted but fifteen or
+twenty who refused.
+
+The volume of the singing increased as the seats emptied, in it there
+was religious fervour; it appealed strongly even to me. I saw some young
+fellows rise and join the procession; perhaps three or four. There were
+now less than twelve seated. The preacher spoke to us personally; he
+insisted on the passing minutes of the dying year. And still the singers
+passed us. Some leant over and called to us. Our bitter band lessened
+one by one.
+
+Then from the procession came these girl acolytes, and, dividing
+themselves, they appealed to us and prayed. They were not beautiful
+perhaps, but they were women. We outcasts of the prairie and the camp
+fire and the streets had been greatly divorced from feminine sweet
+influences, and these succeeded where speech and prayer and song had
+failed. As one spoke to me I saw hard resolution wither in many. What
+woman had spoken kindly to them in this hard land since they left their
+eastern homes? Why should they pain them? And as they joined the singing
+band of believers the girls came to those of us who still stayed, and
+doubled and redoubled their entreaties. That it was not what they said,
+but those who said it, massing influences and suggestion, showed itself
+when he who had been stubborn to one yielded with moist eyes to two. And
+three overcame him who had mutely resisted less.
+
+They knew their strength, and spoke softly with the voice of loving
+women. And not a soul had spoken to me so in my far and weary songless
+passage from the Atlantic States to the Pacific Coast. Long-repressed
+emotions rose in me as the hair of one brushed my cheek, as the hand of
+another lay upon my shoulder and mutely bade me rise; as another called
+me, as another beckoned. I looked round like a half-fascinated beast,
+and I caught the eye again of the man on my left. He and I were the only
+ones left sitting there. All the rest had risen and were singing with
+the singers.
+
+In his eye, I doubt not, I saw what he saw in mine. A look of
+encouragement, a demand for it, doubt, an emotional struggle, and
+deeper than all a queer bitter amusement, that said plainly, "If you
+fail me, I fall, but I would rather not play the hypocrite in these hard
+times." We nodded rather mentally than actually, and were encouraged, I
+knew if I yielded I was yielding to something founded essentially on
+sex, and for my honesty's sake I would not fail.
+
+"My child, it is no use," I said to her who spoke to me, and, struggling
+with myself, I put her hand from me. But still they moved past and sang,
+and the girls would not leave me till the first stroke of midnight
+sounded from the clock upon the wall. They then went one by one and
+joined the band. I turned again to my man, and conscious of my own hard
+fight, I knew what his had been. We looked at each other, and being men,
+were half ashamed that another should know we had acted rightly
+according to our code, and had won a victory over ourselves.
+
+And now we were truly outcasts, for no one spoke to us again. The
+preacher prayed and we still sat there. But he cast us no word, and the
+urgent women were good only to their conquered. Perhaps in their souls
+was some sense of personal defeat; they had been rejected as women and
+as angels of the Lord. We two at anyrate sat beyond the reach of their
+graciousness; their eyes were averted or lifted up; we lay in outer
+darkness.
+
+As they began to sing once more we both rose and with a friendly look at
+each other went out into the streets of the hostile city. It is easy to
+understand why we did not speak.
+
+I never saw him again.
+
+
+
+
+SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES
+
+
+The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is
+touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we
+fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff
+excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for
+Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself to a
+triumphant foreigner? For my own part, I found a kind of gentle,
+unobtrusive politeness even among those Portuguese who knew I was
+English when I went to Lisbon on the last occasion of the two nations
+quarrelling about a mud flat on the Zambesi. Occasionally, on being
+taken for an American, I did not correct the mistake, for having no
+quarrel with Americans they sometimes confided to me the bitterness of
+their hearts against the English. I stayed in Lisbon at the Hotel
+Universal in the Rua Nova da Almeda, a purely Portuguese house where
+only stray Englishmen came. At the _table d'hôte_ one night I had a
+conversation with a mild-mannered Portuguese which showed the curious
+ignorance and almost childish vanity of the race. I asked him in French
+if he spoke English. He did so badly and we mingled the two languages
+and at last talked vivaciously. He was an ardent politician and hated
+the English virulently, telling me so with curious circumlocutions. He
+was of opinion, he said, that though the English were unfortunately
+powerful on the sea, on land his nation was a match for us. As for the
+English in Africa, he declared the Portuguese able to sweep them into
+the sea. But though he hated the English, his admiration for Queen
+Victoria was as unbounded as our own earth-hunger. She was, he told me,
+entirely on the side of the Portuguese in the sad troubles which English
+politicians were then causing. He detailed, as particularly as if he had
+been present, a strange scene reported to have taken place between
+Soveral, their ambassador, and Lord Salisbury, in which discussion grew
+heated. It seemed as if they would part in anger. At last Soveral arose
+and exclaimed with much dignity: "You must now excuse me, my Lord
+Salisbury, I have to dine with the Queen to-night." My Lord Salisbury
+started, looked incredulous, and said coldly, "You are playing with me.
+This cannot be." "Indeed," said the ambassador, producing a telegram
+from Windsor, "it is as I say." And then Salisbury turned pale, fell
+back in his chair, and gasped for breath. "And after that," said my
+informant, "things went well." Several people at the table listened to
+this story and seemed to believe it. With much difficulty I preserved a
+grave countenance, and congratulated him on the possession of an
+ambassador who was more than a match for our Foreign Minister. Before
+the end of dinner he informed me that the English were as a general rule
+savages, while the Portuguese were civilised. Having lived in London he
+knew this to be so. Finding that he knew the East End of our gigantic
+city, I found it difficult to contradict him.
+
+Certainly Lisbon, as far as visible poverty is concerned, is far better
+than London. I saw few very miserable people; beggars were not at all
+numerous; in a week I was only asked twice for alms. One constantly
+hears that Lisbon is dirty, and as full of foul odours as Coleridge's
+Cologne. I did not find it so, and the bright sunshine and the fine
+colour of the houses might well compensate for some draw-backs. The
+houses of this regular town are white, and pale yellow, and fine
+worn-out pink, with narrow green painted verandahs which soon lose
+crudeness in the intense light. The windows of the larger blocks are
+numerous and set in long regular lines; the streets if narrow run into
+open squares blazing with white unsoiled monuments. All day long the
+ways are full of people who are fairly but unostentatiously polite. They
+do not stare one out of countenance however one may be dressed. In
+Antwerp a man who objects to being wondered at may not wear a light
+suit. Lisbon is more cosmopolitan. But the beauty of the town of Lisbon
+is not added to by the beauty of its inhabitants. The women are
+curiously the reverse of lovely. Only occasionally I saw a face which
+was attractive by the odd conjuncture of an olive skin and light grey
+eyes. They do not wear mantillas. The lower classes use a shawl. Those
+who are of the _bourgeois_ class or above it differ little from
+Londoners. The working or loafing men, for they laugh and loaf, and work
+and chaff and chatter at every corner, are more distinct in costume,
+wearing the flat felt sombrero with turned-up edges that one knows from
+pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still
+retains a smack of it in the way they disregard the sleeves and hang it
+from their shoulders. These men are decidedly not so ugly as the women,
+and vary wonderfully in size, colour and complexion, though a big
+Portuguese is a rarity. The strong point in both sexes is their natural
+gift for wearing colour, for choosing and blending or matching tints.
+
+These Portuguese men and women work hard when they do not loaf and
+chatter. The porters, who stand in knots with cords upon their
+shoulders, bear huge loads; a characteristic of the place is this
+load-bearing and the size of the burdens. Women carry mighty parcels
+upon their heads; men great baskets. Fish is carried in spreading flat
+baskets by girls. They look afar off like gigantic hats: further still,
+like quaint odd toadstools in motion. All household furniture removing
+among the poor is done by hand. Two or four men load up a kind of flat
+hand-barrow without wheels till it is pyramidal and colossal with piled
+gear. Then passing poles through the loop of ropes, with a slow effort
+they raise it up and advance at a funereal and solemn pace. The slowness
+with which they move is pathetic. It is suggestive of a dead burden or
+of some street accident. But of these latter there must be very few;
+there is not much vehicular traffic in Lisbon. It is comparatively rare
+to see anything like cruelty to horses. The mules which draw the
+primitive ramshackle trams have the worst time of it, and are obliged to
+pull their load every now and again off one line on to another, being
+urged thereto with some brutality. But these trams do not run up the
+very hilly parts of the city; the main lines run along the Tagus east
+and west of the great Square of the Black Horse. And by the river the
+city is flat.
+
+Only a little way up, in my street for instance, it rapidly becomes
+hilly. On entering the hotel, to my surprise I went downstairs to my
+bedroom. On looking out of the window a street was even then sixty feet
+below me. The floor underneath me did not make part of the hotel, but
+was a portion of a great building occupied by the poorer people and let
+out in flats. During the day, as I sat by the window working, the noise
+was not intolerable, but at night when the Lisbonensians took to amusing
+themselves they roused me from a well-earned sleep. They shouted and
+sang and made mingled and indistinguishable uproars which rose wildly
+through the narrow deep space and burst into my open window. After long
+endurance I rose and shut it, preferring heat to insomnia. But in the
+day, after that discord, I always had the harmonious compensations of
+true colour. Even when the sun shone brilliantly I could not distinguish
+the grey blue of the deep shadows, so much blue was in the painted or
+distempered outer walls. It was in Lisbon that I first began to discern
+the mental effect of colour, and to see that it comes truly and of
+necessity from a people's temperament. Can a busy race be true
+colourists?
+
+In some parts of the town--the eastern quarters--one cannot help
+noticing the still remaining influence of the Moors. There are even some
+true relics; but certainly the influence survives in flat-sided houses
+with small windows and Moorish ornament high up just under the edge of
+the flat roof. One day, being tired of the more noisy western town, I
+went east and climbed up and up, being alternately in deep shadow and
+burning sunlight and turned round by a barrack, where some soldiers eyed
+me as a possible Englishman. I hoped to see the Tagus at last, for here
+the houses are not so lofty, and presently, being on very high ground, I
+caught a view of it, darkly dotted with steamers, over some flat roofs.
+Towards the sea it narrows, but above Lisbon it widens out like a lake.
+On the far side was a white town, beyond that again hills blue with
+lucid atmosphere. At my feet (I leant against a low wall) was a terraced
+garden with a big vine spread on a trellis, making--or promising to make
+in the later spring--a long shady arbour, for as yet the leaves were
+scanty and freshly green. Every house was faint blue or varied pink, or
+worn-out, washed-out, sun-dried green. All the tones were beautiful and
+modest, fitting the sun yet not competing with it. In London the colour
+would break the level of dull tints and angrily protest, growing scarlet
+and vivid and wrathful. And just as I looked away from the river and the
+vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from
+a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going
+quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on
+the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not
+sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise
+darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they
+laugh and are merry even after they have children of their own.
+
+Though little apt to do what is supposed to be a traveller's duty in
+visiting certain obvious places of interest, I one day hunted for the
+English cemetery in which Fielding lies buried, and found it at last
+just at the back of a little open park or garden where children were
+playing. On going in I found myself alone save for a gardener who was
+cutting down some rank grass with a scythe. This cemetery is the
+quietest and most beautiful I ever saw. One might imagine the dead were
+all friends. They are at anyrate strangers in a far land, an English
+party with one great man among them. I found his tomb easily, for it is
+made of massive blocks of stone. Having brought from home his little
+_Voyage to Lisbon_, written just before he died, I took it out, sat down
+on the stone, and read a page or two. He says farewell at the very end.
+As I sat, the strange and melancholy suggestion of the dead man speaking
+out of that great kind heart of his, now dust, the strong contrast
+between the brilliant sunlight and the heavy sombreness of the cypresses
+of death, the song of spring birds and the sound of children's voices,
+were strangely pathetic. I rose up and paced that little deadman's
+ground which was still and quiet. And on another grave I read but a
+name, the name of some woman "Eleanor." After life, and work, and love,
+this is the end. Yet we do remember Fielding.
+
+On the following day I went to Cintra out of sheer _ennui_, for my
+inability to talk Portuguese made me silent and solitary perforce. And
+at Cintra I evaded my obvious duty, and only looked at the lofty rock on
+which the Moorish castle stands. For one thing the hill was swathed in
+mists, it rained at intervals, a kind of bitter _tramontana_ was
+blowing. And after running the gauntlet of a crowd of vociferous
+donkey-boys I was anxious to get out of the town. I made acquaintance
+with a friendly Cintran dog and went for a walk. My companion did not
+object to my nationality or my inability to express myself in fluent
+Portuguese, and amused himself by tearing the leaves of the Australian
+gum-trees, which flourish very well in Portugal. But at last, in cold
+disgust at the uncharitable puritanic weather which destroyed all beauty
+in the landscape, I returned to the town. Here I passed the prison. On
+spying me the prisoners crowded to the barred windows; those on the
+lower floor protruded their hands, those on the upper storey sent down a
+basket by a long string; I emptied my pockets of their coppers. It
+seemed not unlike giving nuts to our human cousins at the Zoo. Surely
+Darwin is the prince of pedigree-makers. Before him the darings of the
+bravest herald never went beyond Adam. He has opened great possibilities
+to the College dealing with inherited dignity of ancient fame.
+
+This Cintra is a town on a hill and in a hole, a kind of half-funnel
+opening on a long plain which is dotted by small villages and farms. If
+the donkey-boys were extirpated it might be fine on a fine day.
+
+Returning to the station, I ensconced myself in a carriage out of the
+way of the cutting wind, and talked fluent bad French with a kindly old
+Portuguese who looked like a Quaker. Two others came in and entered into
+a lively conversation in which Charing Cross and London Bridge occurred
+at intervals. It took an hour and a quarter to do the fifteen mites
+between Cintra and Lisbon. I was told it was considered by no means a
+very slow train. Travelling in Portugal may do something to reconcile
+one to the trains in the south-east of England.
+
+The last place I visited in Lisbon was the market. Outside, the glare of
+the hot sun was nearly blinding. Just in that neighbourhood all the main
+buildings are purely white, even the shadows make one's eyes ache. In
+the open spaces of the squares even brilliantly-clad women seemed black
+against white. Inside, in a half-shade under glass, a dense crowd moved
+and chattered and stirred to and fro. The women wore all the colours of
+flowers and fruit, but chiefly orange. And on the stone floor great flat
+baskets of oranges, each with a leaf of green attached to it, shone like
+pure gold. Then there were red apples, and red handkerchiefs twisted
+over dark hair. Milder looking in tint was the pale Japanese apple with
+an artistic refinement of paler colour. The crowd, the good humour, the
+noise, even the odour, which was not so offensive as in our English
+Covent Garden, made a striking and brilliant impression. Returning to
+the hotel, I was met by a scarlet procession of priests and acolytes who
+bore the Host. The passers-by mostly bared their heads. Perhaps but a
+little while ago every one might have been worldly wise to follow their
+example, for the Inquisition lasted till 1808 in Spain.
+
+In the afternoon of that day I went on board the _Dunottar Castle_, and
+in the evening sailed for Madeira.
+
+A week's odd moments of study and enforced intercourse with waiters and
+male chambermaids, whose French was even more primitive than my own,
+had taught me a little Portuguese, that curious, unbeautiful sounding
+tongue, and I found it useful even on board the steamer. At anyrate I
+was able to interpret for a Funchal lawyer who sat by me at table, and
+afterwards invited me to see him. This smattering of Portuguese I found
+more useful still in Madeira, or at Funchal--its capital--for I stayed
+in native hotels. It is the only possible way of learning anything about
+the people in a short visit. Moreover, the English hotels are full of
+invalids. It is curious to note the present prevalence of consumption
+among the natives of Funchal. It is a good enough proof on the first
+face of it that consumption is catching. There is a large hospital here
+for Portuguese patients, though the disease was unknown before the
+English made a health resort of it.
+
+Funchal has been a thousand times described, and is well worthy of it.
+Lying as it does in a long curve with the whole town visible from the
+sea, as the houses grow fewer and fewer upon the slopes of the lofty
+mountain background, it is curiously theatrical and scenic in effect. It
+is artistically arranged, well-placed; a brilliant jewel in a dark-green
+setting, and the sea is amethyst and turquoise.
+
+I stayed in an hotel whose proprietor was an ardent Republican. One
+evening he mentioned the fact in broken English, and I told him that in
+theory I also was of that creed. He grew tremendously excited, opened a
+bottle of Madeira, shared it with me and two Portuguese, and insisted on
+singing the Marseillaise until a crowd collected in front of the house,
+whose open windows looked on an irregular square. Then he and his
+friends shouted "Viva la partida dos Republicanos!" The charges at this
+hotel were ridiculously small--only three and fourpence a day for board
+and lodging. And it was by no means bad; at anyrate it was always
+possible to get fruit, including loquats, strawberries, custard apples,
+bananas, oranges, and the passion-flower fruit, which is not enticing on
+a first acquaintance, and resembles an anæmic pomegranate. Eggs, too,
+were twenty-eight for tenpence; fish was at nominal prices.
+
+But there is nothing to do in Funchal save eat and swim or ride. The
+climate is enervating, and when the east wind blows from the African
+coast it is impossible to move save in the most spiritless and languid
+way. It may make an invalid comparatively strong, but I am sure it might
+reduce a strong man to a state of confirmed laziness little removed
+from actual illness. I was glad one day to get horses, in company with
+an acquaintance, and ride over the mountains to Fayal, on the north side
+of the island. And it was curious to see the obstinate incredulity of
+the natives when we declared we meant going there and back in one day.
+The double journey was only a little over twenty-six miles, yet it was
+declared impossible. Our landlord drew ghastly pictures of the state we
+should be in, declaring we did not know what we were doing; he called in
+his wife, who lifted up her hands against our rashness and crossed
+herself piously when we were unmoved; he summoned the owner of the
+horses, who said the thing could not be done. But my friend was not to
+be persuaded, declaring that Englishmen could do anything, and that he
+would show them. He explained that we were both very much more than
+admirable horsemen, and only minimised his own feats in the colonies by
+kindly exaggerating mine in America, and finally it was settled gravely
+that we were to be at liberty to kill ourselves and ruin the horses for
+a lump sum of two pounds ten, provided we found food and wine for the
+two men who were to be our guides. In the morning, at six o'clock, we
+set out in a heavy shower of rain. Before we had gone up the hill a
+thousand feet we were wet through, but a thousand more brought us into
+bright sunlight. Below lay Funchal, underneath a white sheet of
+rain-cloud; the sea beyond it was darkened here and there; it was at
+first difficult to distinguish the outlying Deserta Islands from sombre
+fogbanks. But as we still went up and up the day brightened more and
+more, and when Funchal was behind and under the first hills the sea
+began to glow and glitter. Here and there it shone like watered silk.
+The Desertas showed plainly as rocky masses; a distant steamer trailed a
+thin ribbon of smoke above the water. Close at hand a few sheep and
+goats ran from us; now and again a horse or two stared solemnly at us;
+and we all grew cheerful and laughed. For the air was keen and bracing;
+we were on the plateau, nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and in
+a climate quite other than that which choked the distant low-lying town.
+Then we began to go down.
+
+All the main roads of the Ilha da Madeira are paved with close-set
+kidney pebbles, to save them from being washed out and destroyed by the
+sudden violent semi-tropical rains. Even on this mountain it was so,
+and our horses, with their rough-shod feet, rattled down the pass
+without faltering. The road zigzagged after the manner of mountain
+roads. When we reached the bottom of a deep ravine it seemed impossible
+that we could have got there, and getting out seemed equally impossible.
+The slopes of the hills were often fifty degrees. Everywhere was a thick
+growth of brush and trees. At times the road ran almost dangerously
+close to a precipice. But at last, about eleven o'clock, we began to get
+out of the thick entanglement of mountains and in the distance could see
+the ocean on the north side of the island. "Fayal is there," said our
+guide, pointing, as it seemed, but a little way off. Yet it took two
+hours' hard riding to reach it. Our path lay at first along the back of
+a great spur of the main mountain; it narrowed till there was a
+precipice on either side--on the right hand some seven or eight hundred
+feet, on the left more than a thousand. I had not looked down the like
+since I crossed the Jackass Mountain on the Fraser River in British
+Columbia. Underneath us were villages--scattered huts, built like
+bee-hives. The piece of level ground beneath was dotted with them. The
+place looked like some gigantic apiary. The dots of people seemed
+little larger than bees. And soon we came to the same stack-like houses
+close to our path. It was Sunday, and these village folks were dressed
+in their best clothes. They were curiously respectful, for were we not
+_gente de gravate_--people who wore cravats--gentlemen, in a word? So
+they rose up and uncovered. We saluted them in passing. It was a
+primitive sight. As we came where the huts were thicker, small crowds
+came to see us. Now on the right hand we saw a ridge with pines on it,
+suggesting, from the shape of the hill, a bristly boar's back; on the
+left the valley widened; in front loomed up a gigantic mass of rock,
+"The Eagle's Cliff," in shape like Gibraltar. It was 1900 feet high, and
+even yet it was far below us. But now the path pitched suddenly
+downwards; there were no paving-pebbles here, only the native hummocks
+of rock and the harder clay not yet washed away. The road was like a
+torrent-bed, for indeed it was a torrent when it rained; but still our
+horses were absolute in faith and stumbled not. And the Eagle's Cliff
+grew bigger and bigger still as we plunged down the last of the spur to
+a river then scanty of stream, and we were on the flat again not far
+from the sea. But to reach Fayal it was necessary to climb again,
+turning to the left.
+
+Here we found a path which, with all my experience of Western America
+mountain travel, seemed very hard to beat in point of rockiness and
+steepness. We had to lead our horses and climb most carefully. But when
+a quarter of a mile had been done in this way it was possible to mount
+again, and we were close to Fayal. I had thought all the time that it
+was a small town, but it appeared to be no more than the scattered huts
+we had passed, or those we had noted from the lofty spur. Our objective
+was a certain house belonging to a Portuguese landowner who occupied the
+position of an English squire in the olden days. Both my friend and I
+had met him several times in Funchal, and, by the aid of an interpreter,
+had carried on a conversation. But my Portuguese was dinner-table talk
+of the purely necessary order, and my companion's was more exiguous than
+my own. So we decided to camp before reaching his house, and eat our
+lunch undisturbed by the trouble of being polite without words. We told
+our guide this, and as he was supposed to understand English we took it
+for granted that he did so when we ordered him to pick some spot to
+camp a good way from the landowner's house. But in spite of our
+laborious explanations he took us on to the very estate, and plumped us
+down not fifty yards from the house. As we were ignorant of the fact
+that this was the house, we sent the boy there for hot water to make
+coffee, and then to our horror we saw the very man whom we just then
+wanted to avoid. We all talked together and gesticulated violently. I
+tried French vainly; my little Portuguese grew less and less, and
+disappeared from my tongue; and then in despair we hailed the cause of
+the whole misfortune, and commanded him to explain. What he explained I
+know not, but finally our friend seemed less hurt than he had been, and
+he returned to his house on our promising to go there as soon as our
+lunch was finished.
+
+The whole feeling of this scene--of this incident, of the place, the
+mountains, the primitive people--was so curious that it was difficult to
+think we were only four days from England. Though the people were gentle
+and kind and polite, they seemed no more civilised, from our point of
+view, than many Indians I have seen. Indeed, there are Indian
+communities in America which are far ahead of them in culture. I seemed
+once more in a wild country. But our host (for, being on his ground, we
+were his guests) was most amiable and polite. It certainly was rather
+irksome to sit solemnly in his best room and stare at each other without
+a word. Below the open window stood our guide, so when it became
+absolutely necessary for me to make our friend understand, or for me to
+die of suppression of urgent speech, I called to João and bade him
+interpret. We were silent again until wine was brought. Then his
+daughter, almost the only beautiful Portuguese or Madeiran girl I ever
+saw, came in. We were introduced, and, in default of the correct thing
+in her native language, I informed her, in a polite Spanish phrase I
+happened to recollect, that I was at her feet. Then, as I knew her
+brother in Funchal, I called for the interpreter and told her so as an
+interesting piece of information. She gave me a rose, and, looking out
+of the window, she taught me the correct Portuguese for Eagle's
+Cliff--"Penha d'aguila." We were quite friends.
+
+It was then time for us to return if we meant to keep to our word and do
+the double journey in one day. But a vociferous expostulation came from
+our host. He talked fast, waved his hands, shook his head, and was
+evidently bent on keeping us all night. We again called in the
+interpreter, explaining that our reputation as Englishmen, as horsemen,
+as men, rested on our getting back to Funchal that night, and, seeing
+the point as a man of honour, he most regretfully gave way, and, having
+his own horse saddled, accompanied us some miles on the road. We rode up
+another spur, and came to a kind of wayside hut where three or four
+paths joined. Here was congregated a brightly-clad crowd of nearly a
+hundred men, women and children. They rose and saluted us; we turned and
+took off our hats. I noticed particularly that this man who owned so
+much land and was such a magnate there did the same. I fancied that
+these people had gathered there as much to see us pass as for Sunday
+chatter. For English travellers on the north side of the island are not
+very common, and I daresay we were something in the nature of an event.
+Turning at this point to the left, we plunged sharply downwards towards
+a bridge over a torrent, and here parted from our land-owning friend. We
+began to climb an impossible-looking hill, which my horse strongly
+objected to. On being urged he tried to back off the road, and I had
+some difficulty in persuading him that he could not kill me without
+killing himself. But a slower pace reconciled him to the road, and as I
+was in no great hurry I allowed him to choose his own. Certainly the
+animals had had a hard day of it even so far, and we had much to do
+before night. We were all of us glad to reach the Divide and stay for a
+while at the Poizo, or Government rest-house, which was about half-way.
+One gets tolerable Madeira there.
+
+It was eight or half-past when we came down into Funchal under a moon
+which seemed to cast as strongly-marked shadows as the very sun itself.
+The rain of the morning had long ago passed away, and the air was
+warm--indeed, almost close--after the last part of the ride on the
+plateau, which began at night-time to grow dim with ragged wreaths of
+mist. Our horses were so glad to accomplish the journey that they
+trotted down the steep stony streets, which rang loudly to their iron
+hoofs. When we stopped at the stable I think I was almost as glad as
+they; for, after all, even to an Englishman with his country's
+reputation to support, twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle are
+somewhat tiring. And though I was much pleased to have seen more of the
+Ilha da Madeira than most visitors, I remembered that I had not been on
+horseback for nearly five years.
+
+
+
+
+A PONDICHERRY BOY
+
+
+When I first went out to the Australian colonies in 1876 in the
+_Hydrabad_, a big sailing ship registered as belonging to Bombay, I had
+a very curious time of it, take it altogether. It was my first real
+experience of the outside world, and the hundred and two days the
+_Hydrabad_ took from Liverpool to Melbourne made a very valuable piece
+of schooling for a greenhorn. I was a steerage passenger, and the
+steerage of a sailing vessel twenty-five years ago was something to see
+and smell. Perhaps it is no better now, but then it was certainly very
+bad. The food was poor, the quarters dirty, the accommodation far too
+limited to swing even the traditional cat in, and my companions were for
+the most part Irishmen of the lowest and poorest peasant class. In these
+days I was quite fresh from home and was rather particular in my tastes.
+Some of that has been knocked out of me since. A great deal of it was
+knocked out of me in that passage.
+
+Yet it was, take it altogether, an astonishingly fertile trip for a
+young and green lad who was not yet nineteen. The _Hydrabad_ usually
+made a kind of triangular voyage. She took emigrants and a general cargo
+to Melbourne, loaded horses there for Australia, and came back to
+England once more with anything going in the shape of cargo to be picked
+up in the Hooghly. She carried a Calashee crew, that is, a crew of mixed
+Orientals, and among them were native Hindoos, Klings, Malays,
+Sidi-boys. In those days I had not been in the United States and had not
+yet imbibed any great contempt for coloured people. They were on the
+whole infinitely more interesting than the Irish. I knew nothing of the
+world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The
+old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who
+took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a
+pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the
+sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he
+believed to be English, he could not read a word, even in the
+Persi-Arabic character. The cooks, or _bandaddies_, were also friends
+of mine, and more than once they supplemented the intolerably meagre
+steerage fare by giving me something good to eat. I soon knew every man
+in the crew, and could call each by his name. Sometimes I went on the
+lookout with one of them, and one particular Malay was very keen on
+teaching me his language. So far as I remember the languages talked by
+the crew included Malay, Hindustani, Tamil and, oddly enough, French.
+That language was of course spoken by someone who came from Pondicherry,
+that small piece of country which, with Chandernagor, represents the
+French-Indian Empire of Du Plessis's time. I had learnt a little
+Hindustani and Malay, and could understand all the usual names of the
+sails and gear before I discovered that there was someone on board whose
+native tongue was French, or who, at anyrate, could talk it fluently
+enough. We were far to the south of the Line before I found this out.
+For, of course, among his fellows the boy from Pondicherry spoke
+Hindustani mixed with Malay and perhaps with Tamil. I well remember how
+I made the discovery. It was odd enough to me, but far stranger, far
+more wonderful, far more full of mystery to my little, excitable and
+very dark-skinned friend. I daresay, if he lives, that to this hour he
+remembers the English boy who so surprised him.
+
+The weather was intensely hot and I had climbed for a little air into
+one of the boats lying in the skids. The shadow of the main-topsail
+screened me from the sun; there was just enough wind to keep the canvas
+doing its work in silence. It was Sunday and the whole ship was
+curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently
+disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who
+came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which
+he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first
+time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know
+a little French. I knew remarkably little myself; I could read it with
+difficulty. My colloquial French was then, as now, intensely and
+intolerably English. I said, "_Bon jour_, Pondicherry!"
+
+The result was astounding. He turned to me with an awe-stricken look, as
+he dropped his tin plate with its precious burden, and holding out both
+hands as though to embrace a fellow countryman, he exclaimed in
+French,--
+
+"What--what, do _you_ come from Pondicherry?"
+
+For a moment or two I did not follow his meaning. I did not see what
+French meant to him; I could not tell that it represented his little
+fatherland. I had imagined he knew it was a foreign tongue. But it was
+not foreign to him.
+
+"No," I said, "I am an Englishman."
+
+He sat down on a thwart and stared at me as if I was some strange
+miracle. His next words let me into the heart of his mystery.
+
+"It is _not_ possible. You _speak_ Pondicherry!"
+
+He did not even know that he was speaking French, the language of a
+great Western nation. He could not know that I was doing my feeble best
+to speak the language of a great literature; the language of Voltaire,
+of Victor Hugo, of diplomacy. No, he and I were speaking Pondicherry,
+the language of a derelict corner of mighty Hindustan. Now he eyed me
+with suspicion.
+
+"When were you there?" he demanded in a whisper.
+
+If I was not Pondicherry born I must at least have lived there in order
+to have learnt the language.
+
+"Pondy, I was never there," I answered.
+
+He evidently did not believe me. I had some mysterious reason for
+concealing that I was either Pondicherry born or that I had resided
+there.
+
+"Then you didn't know it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you have not been in Villianur?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or Bahur?"
+
+I shook my head. He shook his and stared at me suspiciously. Perhaps I
+had committed some crime there.
+
+"Then how did you learn it?"
+
+"I learnt it in England."
+
+That I was undoubtedly speaking the unhappy truth would have been
+obvious to any Frenchman. But to Pondicherry what I said was so
+obviously a gross and almost foolish piece of fiction that he shook his
+head disdainfully. And yet why should I lie? He spoke so rapidly that I
+could not follow him.
+
+"If you speak so fast I cannot understand," I said.
+
+"Ah, then," he replied hopefully, "it is a long time since you were
+there. Perhaps you were very young then?"
+
+I once more insisted that I had never been at Pondicherry, or even in
+any part of India. All I said convinced him the more that I was not
+speaking the truth.
+
+"You speak Hindustani with the _bandaddy_."
+
+It is true I had learnt a dozen phrases and had once or twice used them.
+To say I had learnt them in the ship was useless.
+
+"Oh, no, you have been in India. Why will you not tell me the truth,
+sahib? I am the only one from Pondicherry but you."
+
+He spoke mournfully. I was denying my own fatherland, denying help and
+comradeship to my own countryman! It was, thought Pondicherry, cruel,
+unkind, unpatriotic. He gathered up the mess he had spilt and descended
+sorrowfully to the main deck to discuss me with his friends among the
+crew. As I heard afterwards from the wrinkled old serang, there were
+many arguments started in the fo'castle as to my place of origin. It was
+said, by those who took sides against Pondicherry, that even if I knew
+"Pondicherry" (and for that they only had his word), I also undoubtedly
+knew English. And when did any of the white rulers of Pondicherry know
+that tongue? Some of the Lascars who had been on the Madras coast in
+country boats swore that no one spoke English there. On the whole, as I
+came from England and knew English it was more likely that I was what I
+said than that I came from Pondicherry. But even so all agreed it was a
+mystery that I could speak it. The serang came to me quietly.
+
+"Say, Robat, you tell me. You come Pondicherry?"
+
+"No, serang," said "Robat."
+
+"But you speak Pondicherry the boy say, Robat?"
+
+"Yes, I speak it, serang. Many English people speak it a little. Very
+easy for English people learn a little, just the same as we learn _jeldy
+jow, toom sooar_."
+
+And as the serang was well acquainted with the capabilities of English
+officers with regard to abusive language, he went away convinced that
+"Pondicherry" and "Hindustani" insults were perhaps taught in English
+schools after all.
+
+In spite of my refusing to take Pondicherry into my confidence he
+remained on friendly, if suspicious, terms with me. When I said a word
+or two of French to him he beamed all over, and turned to the others as
+much as to say, "Didn't I tell you he came from my country?" For
+nothing that I and the serang or his friends said convinced him, or even
+shook his opinion. He used to sneak up to me occasionally as he worked
+about the decks and spring a question on me about someone at
+Pondicherry. Of course I had heard of no one there. But my ignorance was
+wholly put on; he was sure of that. Often and often I caught his eyes on
+me, and I knew his mind was pondering theories to account for my
+conduct. It was all very well for me or anyone else to say that
+Pondicherry was talked elsewhere than in his own home. He had travelled,
+he had been in Australia, in England, in many parts of the East, and he
+had never, never met anyone but himself and myself who knew it! I think
+he would have given me a month's pay if I would have only owned up to
+having been at Pondicherry. He certainly offered me an ample plateful of
+curried shark, a part of one we had caught days before, if I would be
+frank about the matter; but even my desire to obtain possession of that
+smell and drop it overboard did not tempt me to a white lie. I persisted
+in remaining an Englishman through the whole passage of one hundred and
+two days. And then at last, after good times and bad, after calms on
+the Line and no small hurricane south of stormy Cape Leuuwin, we came up
+with Cape Otway and entered the Heads. Pondicherry's time for solving
+the mystery grew short. In another few hours the passengers would go
+ashore and be never seen again. For my own part, though the passage had
+been one of pure discomfort, I was almost sorry to leave the old ship. I
+had to quit a number of friends, black and white, and had to face a new
+and perhaps unfriendly world. Though the _Hydrabad_ half-starved me I
+was at anyrate sure of water and biscuit. And many of the poor Lascars
+had been chums to me. As I made preparations to leave the vessel and
+stood on deck waiting, I saw Pondicherry sneaking about in the
+background. I said farewell to his old serang, and the Malay
+quartermasters, who were all fine men, and to some of the meaner outcast
+Klings, and then Pondicherry darted up to me. I knew quite well what was
+in his mind. It was in his very eyes. I was now going, and should be
+seen no more. Perhaps at the last I might be induced to speak the truth.
+And even if I did not own up bravely, it was at anyrate necessary to bid
+farewell to a countryman, though he denied his own country. He came
+close to me in the crowd and touched my sleeve appealingly.
+
+"What is it, Pondy?"
+
+"Oh, sahib, you tell me _now_ where you learn Pondicherry?"
+
+"Pondy, I told you the truth long ago," I answered.
+
+"Sahib, it is not possible."
+
+He turned away, and I went on board the tug which served us as a tender.
+Presently I saw him lean over the rail and wave his hand. When he saw
+that I noticed him he called out in French once more, with angry,
+scornful reproach,--
+
+"If you were not there, how, _how_ can you speak it?"
+
+
+
+
+A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS
+
+
+The travel-micrococcus infected me early. Before I can remember I
+travelled in England, and, when my memory begins, a stay of two years in
+any town made me weary. My brothers and sisters and I would then inquire
+what time the authorities meant to send my father elsewhere, and we were
+accustomed to denounce any delay on the part of a certain Government
+department in giving us "the route." Such a youth was gipsying, and if
+any original fever of the blood led to wandering, such a training
+heightened the tendency. To this day even, after painful and laborious
+travel, Fate cannot persuade me that my stakes should not be pulled up
+at intervals. I understand "trek fever," which, after all, is only
+Eldorado hunting. With the settler unsatisfied a belief in immortality
+takes its place.
+
+In the ferment of youth and childhood, which now threatens to quiet
+down, my feet stayed in many English towns and villages, from
+Barnstaple to Carlisle, from Bedford to Manchester, and I hated them all
+with fervour, only mitigating my wrath by great reading. I could only
+read at eight years of age, but from that time until eleven I read a
+mingled and most preposterous mass of literature and illiterature. It
+was a substitute for travel, and, in my case, not a substitute only, but
+a provoker. Reading is mostly dram-drinking, mostly drugging; it throws
+a veil over realities. With the child I knew best it urged him on and
+infected me with world-hunger and roused activities. To be sure the
+Elder Brethren, who are youth's first gaolers, nearly made me believe,
+by dint of repetition (they, themselves, probably believing it by now),
+that books and knowledge, which are acquired for, with, by and through
+examinations, were, of themselves, noble and admirable, and that an
+adequate acquaintance with them (provided such acquaintance could be
+proved adequate to Her Majesty's Commissioners of the Civil Service)
+would inevitably make a man of me. For the opinion is rooted deep in
+many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a
+cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard,
+is to be a very fine fowl indeed.
+
+Some spirit of revolt saved the child (now a boy, I guess) from being a
+Civil Cochin China, and sent him to Australia. The ship in which I
+sailed for Melbourne was my first introduction to outside realities, to
+world realities as distinct from the preliminary brutalities of school,
+and it opened my eyes--indeed, gave me eyes instead of the substitutes
+for vision favoured by the Elder Brethren, who may be taken to include
+schoolmasters, professors, and good parents. How any child survives
+without losing his eyesight altogether is now a marvel to me. Certainly,
+very few retain more than a dim vision, which permits them to wallow
+amongst imitations (such as a last year's Chippendale morality) and
+imagine themselves well furnished. My new university (after Owens
+College an admirable hot-bed for some products under glass) was the
+_Hydrabad_, 1600 tons burden, with a mixed mass of passengers, mostly
+blackguards in the act of leaving England to allow things to blow over,
+and a Lascar crew, Hindoos, Seedee boys and Malays. The professors at
+this notable college were many, and all were fit for their unendowed
+chairs. They taught mostly, and in varying ways, the art of seeing
+things as they are, and if some saw things as they were not, that is,
+double, the object lesson was eminently useful to the amazed scholar.
+Some of them pronounced me green, and I was green.
+
+But a four months' session and procession through the latitudes and
+longitudes brought me to Australia in a less obviously green condition.
+I had learnt the one big lesson that too few learn. I had to depend on
+myself. And Australia said, "You know nothing and must work." Had I not
+sat with Malays, and collogued with negroes, and eaten ancient shark
+with Hindoos? I was afraid of the big land where I could reckon on no
+biscuit tub always at hand, but these were men who had faced other
+continents and other seas. I could face realities, too, or I could try.
+
+It is the unnecessary work that gets the glory mostly, especially in a
+fat time of peace, but some day the scales will be held more level. A
+shearer of sheep will be held more honourable than a shearer of men; and
+he who shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked
+lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had
+their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more
+than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no more.
+But we live under the rule of Rabesqurat, Queen of Illusion.
+
+The Australian bush university, with the sun, moon and stars in the high
+places, and labour, hunger and thirst holding prominent lecturerships,
+helped to educate me. The proof of that education was that I know now
+that a big bit of my true life's work was done there. The preparation
+turned out to be the work itself. One does necessary things there, and
+they are done without glory and often without present satisfaction,
+except the satisfaction given to toil. What does the world want and must
+have? If all the theatres were put down and all the actors sent to
+useful work, things would be better instead of worse. If all the
+music-halls became drill-halls it would add to the world's health. If
+most of the writers concluded justly that they were in no way necessary
+or useful, some healthy man might be added to the list of workers and
+some unhealthy ones would find themselves better or very justly dead.
+But the sheep and cattle have to be attended to, and ships must be
+sailed, and bridges must be built. Hunger and thirst, and all the
+educational unrighteousness of the elements must be met, fought,
+out-marched or out-manoeuvred. I went to school in the Murray Ranges,
+and carried salt to fluky sheep. Even if this present screed stirred me
+doubly to action, the salt-carrying was better. The sun and moon and
+stars overhead, and the big grey or brown plain beneath were for ever
+instilling knowledge that a city knows not. A city's soot kills elms,
+they say; only plane trees, self-scaling and self-cleaning, live and
+grow and survive. I think man is more like the elm; he cannot clean
+himself in a city.
+
+It has often been a question for me to solve, now youth exists no more,
+except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's
+own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in
+the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy
+exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the
+beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying
+the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies
+what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself or
+a few others.
+
+For America was my second great university, and though I lack any
+learned degree earned by examinations, and may put no letters after my
+name, I maintain I passed creditably, if without honours, in the hardest
+schools of the world. About a young man's first freedom still hangs some
+illusion. With apparently impregnable health and unsubdued spirits, he
+has the illusion of present immortality; life is a world without end.
+But when youth begins to sober and health shows cracks and gaps, and
+hard labour comes, then the realities, indeed, crawl out and show
+themselves. My early work in New South Wales seemed to me then like
+sport. America was real life; it was for ever putting the stiffest
+questions to me. I can imagine an examination paper which might appal
+many fat graduates.
+
+1. Describe from experience the sensations of hunger when prolonged over
+three days.
+
+2. Explain the differences in living in New York, Chicago and San
+Francisco on a dollar a week. In such cases, how would you spend ten
+cents if you found it in the street at three o'clock in the morning?
+
+3. How long would it be in your own case before want of food destroyed
+your sense of private property? Give examples from your own experience.
+
+4. How far can you walk without food--(_a_) when you are trying to
+reach a definite point; (_b_) when you are walking with an insane view
+of getting to some place unknown where a good job awaits you?
+
+5. If, after a period (say three weeks) of moderate starvation, and two
+days of absolute starvation, you are offered some work, which would be
+considered laborious by the most energetic coal-heaver, would you tackle
+it without food or risk the loss of the job by requesting your employer
+to advance you 15 cents for breakfast?
+
+6. Can you admire mountain scenery--(_a_) when you are very hungry;
+(_b_) when you are very thirsty? If you have any knowledge of the
+ascetic ecstasy, describe the symptoms.
+
+7. You are in South-west Texas without money and without friends. How
+would you get to Chicago in a fortnight? What is the usual procedure
+when a town objects to impecunious tramps staying around more than
+twenty-four hours? Can you describe a "calaboose"?
+
+8. Sketch an American policeman. Is he equally polite to a railroad
+magnate and a tramp? What do you understand by "fanning with a club"?
+
+9. Which are the best as a whole diet--apples or water-melons?
+
+10. Define "tramp," "bummer," "heeler," "hoodlum," and "politician."
+
+This is a paper put together very casually, and just as the pen runs,
+but the man who can pass such an examination creditably must know many
+things not revealed to the babes and sucklings of civilisation. From my
+own point of view I think the questions fairly easy, a mere
+matriculation paper.
+
+When the Queen of Illusion illudes no more youth is over. I am ready to
+admit Illusion still reigned when I took to writing for a living. The
+first illusion was that I was not doing it for a living (it is true I
+did not make one) but because the arts were rather noble than otherwise
+and extremely needed. I admit now that they are necessary, in the sense
+of the necessarian, but I can see little use for them, unless the
+production of Illusion (with few or many gaps in it) is needed for the
+world's progress. The laudation of the artist, the writer, and the actor
+returns anew with the end of the world's great year. But if any golden
+age comes back, the setting apart of the Amusement Monger will cease. If
+it does not cease, their antics will be the warnings of the intoxicated
+Helot.
+
+Yet without illusion one cannot write. Or so it seems to me. Is this
+writing period only another university after all? Perhaps teaching never
+ends, though the art of learning what is taught seems very rare. To
+write and "get there" in the meanest sense, so far as money is
+concerned, is the overcoming of innumerable obstacles. London taught me
+a great deal that I could not learn in Australia, or on the sea, or in
+any Texas, or British Columbia. But I came to London with scaled eyes,
+and tasted other poverty than that I knew. Illusion is mostly
+foreshortening of time. One wants to prophesy and to see. The chief
+lesson here is that prophets must be blind. The end of the race is the
+racing thereof after all. To do a little useful work (even though the
+useful may be a thousandth part of the useless) is the end of living.
+The only illusion worth keeping is that anything can be useful. So far
+my youth is not ended.
+
+
+
+
+MY FRIEND EL TORO
+
+
+It is not everyone who can make friends with a bull, and it is not every
+bull that one can make friends with. Yet next to one or two horses,
+about which I could spin long yarns, El Toro, the big brindled bull of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, is certainly nearest my
+heart. He was my friend, and sometimes my companion; he had a noble
+character for fighting, and in spite of his pugnacity he was amiability
+itself to most human beings. His final end, too, fills me with a sense
+of pathos, and enrages me against those who owned him. They were
+obviously incapable of understanding him as I did.
+
+When I went up to Los Guilucos from San Francisco to take up the
+position of stableman on that ranche, I had little notion of the full
+extent of my duties. What these were is perhaps irrelevant in the
+present connection. And yet it was because I had to work so incredibly
+hard, being often at it from six in the morning to eight or nine
+o'clock at night, that I made particular friends with El Toro, to give
+him his Spanish name. In all that western and south-western part of the
+United States there are remnants of Spanish or Mexican in the common
+talk. For California was once part of Mexico. El Toro became my friend
+and my refuge: when I was driven half-desperate by having ten important
+things to do at once he often came in and helped me to preserve an equal
+mind. I have little doubt that I should have discovered how to work this
+by myself, but as a matter of fact I was put up to some of his uses by
+the man whose place I took. He showed me all I had to do, and lectured
+me on the character of the hard-working lady who owned the place; and
+when I was dazed and stood wondering how one man could do all the
+stableman was supposed to accomplish between sunrise and sundown, Jack
+said, "And besides all this there is a bull!" He said it so oddly and so
+significantly that my heart sank. I imagined a very fierce and ferocious
+animal fit for a Spanish bull-ring, a sharp-horned Murcian good enough
+to try the nerve of the best matador who ever faced horns and a vicious
+charge. Then he took me round the barn and opened a stable. In it El
+Toro was tied to a manger by a rope and ring through his nose: he
+greeted us with a strangled whistle as he still lay down. "When you are
+hard driven good old El Toro will help you," said Jack, as he sat down
+on the bull's big shoulders and started to scratch his curl with a
+little piece of wood which had a blunt nail in it. As I stood El Toro
+chewed the cud and was obviously delighted at having his curl combed.
+
+The departing Jack delivered me another lecture on the uses of a mild
+and amiable but fighting bull on a ranche where a man was likely to be
+worried to death by a lady who had no notion of how much a man ought to
+do in a day. When he had finished he invited me to make friends with El
+Toro by also sitting on his back and scratching him with the blunt nail.
+I did as I was told, and though El Toro twisted his huge head round to
+inspect me he lay otherwise perfectly calm while I went on with his
+toilet. He evidently felt that I was an amiable character, and one well
+adapted to act as his own man. His views of me were confirmed when I
+brought him half a bucket of pears from the big orchard. With a parting
+slap and a sigh of regret which spoke well both for him and the bull,
+Jack went away to "fix" himself for travel. I was left in charge.
+
+How hard I worked on that Sonoma County ranch I can hardly say. I had
+horses in the stable and horses outside. The cattle outside were mine.
+Three hundred sheep I was responsible for. Some young motherless foals I
+nursed. I milked six cows. I chopped wood. I cleaned buggies. I drove
+wagons and carriages and cleaned and greased them. Sometimes I stood in
+the middle of the great barn-lot or barnyard and tore my hair in
+desperation. I had so much to attend to that only the strictest method
+enabled me to get through it. And, as Jack had told me would happen, my
+method was knocked endways by the requirements of the lady who was my
+"boss." What a woman wants done is always the most important thing on
+earth. She used to ask me to do up her acre of a garden in between times
+when the sheep wanted water or twenty horses required hay. She was
+amiable, kindly, but she never understood. At such times who could blame
+me if I went to the bull's stable when I saw her coming. Though the bull
+was the sweetest character on the ranch, she went in mortal terror of
+him. She would try to find me in the horse stable, but she would not
+come near El Toro for her very life. It was better to sit quietly with
+him and recover my equanimity while she called. I knew her well enough
+to know that in a quarter of an hour something else of the vastest
+importance would engage her attention and I should be free to attend
+more coolly to my own work.
+
+Yet sometimes she stuck to my track so closely that there was nothing
+for me to do but to turn El Toro loose. Then I could say, "Very well,
+madam, but in the meantime I must go after the bull." She knew what the
+bull being loose meant; he carried devastation wherever he went. He was
+the greatest fighter in the whole county. I had to get my whip and my
+fastest horse to try and catch him. I can hardly be blamed if I did not
+catch him till the evening. For in that way I got a wild kind of holiday
+on horseback and was saved from insanity. Certainly, when El Toro got
+away on the loose and was looking for other bulls to have a row with I
+could think of nothing else. Sometimes he got free by the rope rotting
+close up to his ring. In that case he went headlong. If he took the rope
+with him he sometimes trod on it and gave himself a nasty check.
+Usually, however, he got it across his big neck and kept it from falling
+to the ground. He never stopped for any gate. When he saw one he gave a
+bellow, charged it and went through the fragments with me after him. If
+I was really anxious to get him back at once I usually caught him within
+a mile. When I wanted a rest I only succeeded in turning him five or six
+miles away, after he had thrashed a bull or two belonging to other
+ranchers. No fence was any use to keep him out or in. On one occasion he
+broke into a barn in which a rash young bull was kept. When the row was
+over that barn stood sadly in need of repair: and so did the young
+pedigree bull. I may say that on this particular occasion El Toro got
+away entirely by himself, and I only knew he was free when I found the
+door of his stable in splinters.
+
+There was a magnificent difference between El Toro as I sat on him and
+scratched him with a nail and as he was when he turned himself loose for
+a happy day in the country. In the stable he was as mild as milk. I
+could have almost imagined him purring like a cat. He chewed the cud and
+made homely sloppy noises with his tongue, and regarded me with a calm,
+bovine gaze, which was as gentle as that of any pet cow's. I could have
+fallen asleep beside him. It is reported that my predecessor Jack, on
+one occasion, came home much the worse for liquor and was found
+reclining on El Toro. There was not a soul on the ranch who dared
+disturb the loving couple. But when the rope was parted and El Toro
+loped down the road to seek a row as keenly as any Irishman on a fair
+day, he was another guess sort of an animal. He carried his tail in the
+air and bellowed wildly to the hills. He threw out challenges to all and
+sundry. He gave it to be understood that the world and the fatness
+thereof were his. This was no mere braggadocio; it was not the misplaced
+confidence of a stall-fed bull in his mere weight; he really could
+fight, and though he was only on the warpath about once a month, there
+was not a bull in the valley which had not retained in his thick skull
+and muddy brains some recollection of El Toro's prowess. The only
+trouble about this, from my pet bull's point of view, was that he could
+rarely get up a row. Most of his possible enemies fled when he tooted
+his horn and waltzed into the arena through a smashed fence. He was
+magnificent and he was war incarnate.
+
+In that country, which is a hard-working country, there is really very
+little sport. Further south in California, the ease-loving Spanish
+people who remain among the Americans still love music and the dance. We
+worked, and worked hard; only Sundays brought us a little surcease from
+toil. All our notions of sport centred on our bull. I had many Italian
+co-workers, some Swedes, and an odd citizen of the United States. All
+alike agreed in being proud of El Toro. We yearned to match him against
+any bull in the State. Sometimes of a Sunday morning, after he had
+devastated the country and was back again, he held a kind of _levée_.
+The Italians brought him pears as I sat on him in triumph and combed him
+in places where he had not been wounded. He always forgot that I had
+come behind him and laced his tough hide with my stock-whip. He bore no
+malice, but took his fruit like a good child. I think he was almost as
+proud of himself as we were. Certainly we were proud of him. As for me,
+had I not ridden desperate miles after him: had I not interviewed
+outraged owners of other bulls and broken fences: had I not played the
+diplomat or the bully according to the treatment which seemed indicated?
+He was, properly speaking, my bull; I did not care if I had to spend
+three days mending our home gates and other's alien fences.
+
+Yes, it was a fine thing to gallop through that warm, bright,
+Californian air after El Toro, with the brown hills on either side and
+its patches of green vineyard brightening daily. It was freedom after
+the toil of axle-greasing and the slow work with sheep. It was better
+than grinding axes and trying to cut the tough knobs of vine stumps:
+better than grooming horses and milking cows. It made me think even more
+of the great Australian plains and of the Texas prairie and the round
+up. _Ay de mi_, I remember it now, sometimes, and I wish I was on
+horseback, swinging my whip and uttering diabolic yells, significant of
+the freedom of the spirit as I rush after the spirit of El Toro. For my
+pet, my brindled fighter, my own El Toro, whom I combed so delicately
+with a bent nail, for whom I gathered buckets of bruised but fat
+Californian pears, is now no more. They told me, when I visited Los
+Guilucos seven years ago, that he became difficult, morose, hard to
+handle, and they sold him. They sold this joyous incarnation of the
+spirit of battle and the pure joy of life for a mean and miserable
+thirteen dollars! When I think of it I almost fall to tears. So might
+some coward son of the seas sell a battleship for ten pounds because it
+was not suitable for a ferry-boat or a river yacht. I would rather a
+thousand times have paid the thirteen dollars myself and have taken him
+out to fight his last Armageddon and then have shot him on the lonely
+hills from which all other bulls had fled. These mean-souled,
+conscienceless moneymakers, who could not understand so brave, so fine a
+spirit, sold him to a Santa Rosa butcher! Shame on them, I say. I am
+sorry I ever revisited the Valley of the Seven Moons to hear such
+lamentable news. It made me unhappy then, makes me unhappy now. My only
+consolation is that once, and twice, and thrice, and yet again, I gave
+El Toro the chance of finding happiness in the conflict. And when I left
+Los Guilucos, before I returned to England, I sat upon his huge
+shoulders and scratched him most thoroughly, while ever and again I
+offered him a juicy and unbruised pear. On that occasion I pulled him
+the best fruit, and left windfalls for the ranging, greedy hogs. And as
+I fed and scratched him he lay on his hunkers in great content, and made
+pleasant noises as he remembered the day before. On that day, owing to
+the kindly feeling of me, his true and real friend, he had had a great
+time three miles towards Glenallen, and had beaten a newly-imported bull
+out of all sense of self-importance. He was pleased with himself,
+pleased with me, pleased with the world.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST
+
+
+Since taking to writing as a profession I have lost most of the interest
+I had in literature as literature pure and simple. That interest
+gradually faded and "Art for Art's sake," in the sense the simple in
+studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very
+rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual
+about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them
+betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is
+nothing, what they say is everything. So on the shelf to which I mostly
+resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little
+work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's
+Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental Bradshaw; many
+Baedekers; a Directory to the Indian Ocean and the China Seas; a big
+folding map of the United States; some books dealing with strategy, and
+some touching on medical knowledge, but principally pathology, and
+especially the pathology of the mind.
+
+Yet in spite of this utilitarian bent of my thoughts there are very many
+books I know and love and sometimes look into because of their
+associations. As I cannot understand (through some mental kink which my
+friends are wont to jeer at) how anyone can return again and again to a
+book for its own sake, I do not read what I know. As soon would I go
+back when it is my purpose to go forward. A book should serve its turn,
+do its work, and become a memory. To love books for their own sake is to
+be crystallised before old age comes on. Only the old are entitled to
+love the past. The work of the young lies in the present and the future.
+
+But still, in spite of my theories, I like to handle, if not to read,
+certain books which were read by me under curious and perhaps abnormal
+circumstances. If I do not open them it is due to a certain bashfulness,
+a subtle dislike of seeing myself as I was. Yet the books I read while
+tramping in America, such as _Sartor Resartus_, have the same attraction
+for me that a man may feel for a place. I carried the lucubrations of
+Teufelsdrockh with me as I wandered; I read them as I camped in the open
+upon the prairie; I slipped them into my pocket when I went shepherding
+in the Texan plateau south of the Panhandle.
+
+Another book which went with me on my tramps through Minnesota and Iowa
+was a tiny volume of Emerson's essays. This I loved less than I loved
+Carlyle, and I gave it to a railroad "section boss" in the north-west of
+Iowa because he was kind to me. When _Sartor Resartus_ had travelled
+with me through the Kicking Horse Pass and over the Selkirks into
+British Columbia, and was sucked dry, I gave it at last to a farming
+Englishman who lived not far from Kamloops. I remember that in the
+flyleaf I kept a rough diary of the terrible week I spent in climbing
+through the Selkirk Range with sore and wounded feet. It is perhaps
+little wonder that I associate Teufelsdrockh, the mind-wanderer, with
+those days of my own life. And yet, unless I live to be old, I shall
+never read the book again.
+
+The tramp, or traveller, or beach-comber, or general scallywag finds
+little time and little chance to read. And for the most part we must own
+he cares little for literature in any form. But I was not always
+wandering. I varied wandering with work, and while working at a sawmill
+on the coast, or close to it, in the lower Fraser River in British
+Columbia, I read much. In the town of New Westminster was a little
+public library, and I used to go thither after work if I was not too
+tired. But the work in a sawmill is very arduous to everyone in it, and
+while the winter kept away I had little energy to read. Presently,
+however, the season changed, and the bitter east winds came out of the
+mountains and fixed the river in ice and froze up our logs in the
+"boom," so that the saws were at last silent, and I was free to plunge
+among the books and roll and soak among them day and night.
+
+The library was very much mixed. It was indeed created upon a pile of
+miscellaneous matter left by British troops when they were stationed on
+the British Columbian mainland. There was much rubbish on the shelves,
+but among the rubbish I found many good books. For instance, that winter
+I read solidly through Gibbon's _Rome_, and refreshed my early memories
+of Mahomet, of Alaric, and of Attila. Those who imported fresh elements
+into the old were even then my greatest interest. I preferred the
+destroyers to the destroyed, being rather on the side of the gods than
+on the side of Cato. Lately, as I was returning from South Africa, I
+tried to read Gibbon once more, and I failed. He was too classic, too
+stately. I fell back on Froude, and was refreshed by the manner, if not
+always delighted by the matter.
+
+After emerging from the Imperial flood at the last chapter, I fell
+headlong into Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_, in nine volumes. Then I
+read Motley's _Netherlands_ and the _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, always
+terrible and picturesque since I had read it as a boy of eleven.
+
+At the sawmill there was but one man with whom I could talk on any
+matters of intellectual interest. He was a big man from Michigan and ran
+the shingle saw. We often discussed what I had lately read, and went
+away from discussion to argument concerning philosophy and theology. He
+was a most lovable person; as keen as a sharpened sawtooth, and a
+polemic but courteous atheist. His greatest sorrow in life was that his
+mother, a Middle State woman of ferocious religion, could not be kept in
+ignorance of his principles. We argued ethics sophistically as to
+whether a convinced agnostic might on occasion hide what he believed.
+
+Sometimes this friend of mine went to the library with me. He had the
+_penchant_ for science so common among the finer rising types of the
+lower classes. So I read Darwin's _Origin of Species_, and talked of it
+with my Michigan man. And then I took to Savage Landor and learnt some
+of his _Imaginary Conversations_ by heart. I could have repeated _Æsop_
+and _Rhodope_.
+
+But the one thing I for ever fell back upon was an old encyclopædia. I
+should be afraid to say how much I read, but to it I owe, doubtless, a
+stock of extensive, if shallow, general knowledge. Certainly it appears
+to have influenced me to this day; for given a similar one I can wander
+from shipbuilding to St. Thomas Aquinas; from the Atomic Theory to the
+Marquis de Sade; from Kant to the building of dams; and never feel dull.
+
+Now when I come across any of these books I am filled with a curious
+melancholy. The _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ means more to me
+than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its
+driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's _Human
+Understanding_ recalls things no man can understand if he has not
+worked alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, I never
+hear him mentioned without seeing the mountains and glaciers of the
+Selkirks; in his pages is the sound of the wind and rain.
+
+There are some novels, too, which have attractions not all their own. I
+remember once walking into a store at Eagle Pass Landing on the Shushwap
+Lake and asking for a book. I was referred to a counter covered with
+bearskins, and beneath the hides I unearthed a pile of novels. The one I
+took was Thomas Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_. And another time I
+rode into Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and, while buying
+stores, saw Gissing's _Demos_ open in front of me. It was anonymous, but
+I knew it for his, and I read it as I rode slowly homeward down the
+Sonoma Valley, the Valley of the Seven Moons.
+
+These are but a few of the books that are burnt into one's memory as by
+fire. All I remember are not literature: perhaps I should reject many
+with scorn at the present day; nevertheless, they have a value to me
+greater than the price set upon many precious folios. I propose one of
+these days to make a shelf among my shelves sacred to the books which I
+read under curious circumstances. I cannot but regret that I often had
+nothing to read at the most interesting times. So far as I can
+recollect, I got through five days' starvation in Australia without as
+much as a newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON
+
+
+It was late in May or early in June, for I cannot now remember the exact
+date, that I landed in Apia, in the island of Upolu. Naturally enough
+that island was not to me so much the centre of Anglo-American and
+German rivalries as the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, then become the
+literary deity of the Pacific. In a dozen shops in Honolulu I had seen
+little plaster busts of him; here and there I came across his
+photograph. And I had a theory about him to put to the test. Though I
+was not, and am not, one of those who rage against over-great praise,
+when there is any true foundation for it, I had never been able to
+understand the laudation of which he was the subject. At that time, and
+until the fragment of _Weir of Hermiston_ was given to the world,
+nothing but his one short story about the thief and poet, Villon, had
+seemed to me to be really great, really to command or even to be an
+excuse for his being in the position in which his critics had placed
+him. Yet I had read _The Wrecker_, _The Ebb Tide_, _The Beach of
+Falesa_, _Kidnapped_, _Catriona_, _The Master of Ballantrae_, and the
+_New Arabian Nights_. I came to the conclusion that, as most of the
+organic chorus of approval came from men who knew him, he must be (as
+all writers, I think, should be) immeasurably greater than his books. I
+was prepared then for a personality, and I found it. When his name is
+mentioned I no longer think of any of his works, but of a sweet-eyed,
+thin, brown ghost of a man whom I first saw upon horseback in a grove of
+cocoanut palms by the sounding surges of a tropic sea. There are
+writers, and not a few of them, whose work it is a pleasure to read,
+while it is a pain to know them, a disappointment, almost an
+unhappiness, to be in their disillusioning company. They have given the
+best to the world. Robert Louis Stevenson never gave his best, for his
+best was himself.
+
+At any time of the year the Navigator Islands are truly tropical, and
+whether the sun inclines towards Cancer or Capricorn, Apia is a bath of
+warm heat. As soon as the _Monowai_ dropped her anchor inside the
+opening of the reef that forms the only decent harbour in all the group,
+I went ashore in haste. Our time was short, but three or four hours, and
+I could afford neither the time nor the money to stay there till the
+next steamer. I had much to do in Australia, and was not a little
+exercised in mind as to how I should ever be able to get round the world
+at all unless I once more shipped before the mast. I was, in fact, so
+hard put to it in the matter of cash, that when the hotel-keeper asked
+three dollars for a pony on which to ride to Vailima, I refused to pay
+it, and went away believing that after all I should not see him whom I
+most desired to meet. Yet it was possible, if not likely, that he would
+come down to visit the one fortnightly link with the great world from
+which he was an exile. I had to trust to chance, and in the meantime
+walked the long street of Apia and viewed the Samoans, whom he so loved,
+with vivid interest. These people, riven and torn by internal
+dissensions between Mataafa and Malietoa, and honeycombed by
+Anglo-American and German intrigue, were the most interesting and the
+noblest that I had met since I foregathered for a time with a wandering
+band of Blackfeet Indians close to Calgary beneath the shadows of the
+Rocky Mountains. Their dress, their customs, and their free and noble
+carriage, yet unspoiled by civilisation, appealed to me greatly. I could
+understand as I saw them walk how Stevenson delighted in them. Man and
+woman alike looked me and the whole world in the face, and went by,
+proud, yet modest, and with the smile of a happy, unconquered race.
+
+As I walked with half a dozen curious indifferents whom the hazards of
+travel had made my companions, we turned from the main road into the
+seclusion of a shaded group of palms, and as I went I saw coming towards
+me a mounted white man behind whom rode a native. As he came nearer I
+looked at him without curiosity, for, as the time passed, I was becoming
+reconciled by all there was to see to the fact that I might not meet
+this exiled Scot. And yet, as he neared and passed me, I knew that I
+knew him, that he was familiar; and very presently I was aware that this
+sense of familiarity was not, as so often happens to a traveller, the
+awakened memory of a type. This was an individual and a personality. I
+stopped and stared after him, and suddenly roused myself. Surely this
+was Robert Louis Stevenson, and this his man. So might the ghosts of
+Crusoe and Friday pass one on the shore of Juan Fernandez.
+
+I called the "boy" and gave him my card, and asked him to overtake his
+master. In another moment my literary apparition, this chief among the
+Samoans, was shaking hands with me. He alighted from his horse, and we
+walked together towards the town. I fell a victim to him, and forgot
+that he wrote. His writings were what packed dates might be to one who
+sat for the first time under a palm in some far oasis; they were but ice
+in a tumbler compared with séracs. He was first a man, and then a
+writer. The pitiful opposite is too common.
+
+I think, indeed I am sure, for I know he could not lie, that he was
+pleased to see me. What I represented to him then I hardly reckoned at
+the time, but I was a messenger from the great world of men; I moved
+close to the heart of things; I was fresh from San Francisco, from New
+York, from London. He spoke like an exile, but one not discouraged.
+Though his physique was of the frailest (I had noted with astonishment
+that his thigh as he sat on horseback was hardly thicker than my
+forearm), he was alert and gently eager. That soft, brown eye which held
+me was full of humour, of pathos, of tenderness, yet I could imagine it
+capable of indignation and of power. It might be that his body was
+dying, but his mind was young, elastic, and unspoiled by selfishness or
+affectation. He had his regrets; they concerned the Samoans greatly.
+
+"Had I come here fifteen years ago I might have ruled these islands."
+
+He imagined it possible that international intrigue might not have
+flourished under him. Never had I seen so fragile a man who would be
+king. He owned, with a shyly comic glance, that he had leanings towards
+buccaneering. The man of action, were he but some shaggy-bearded
+shellback, appealed to him. His own physique was his apology for being
+merely a writer of novels.
+
+We went on board the steamer, and at his request I bade a steward show
+his faithful henchman over her. In the meantime we sat in the saloon and
+drank "soft" drinks. It pleased him to talk, and he spoke fluently in a
+voice that was musical. He touched a hundred subjects; he developed a
+theory of matriarchy. Men loved to steal; women were naturally
+receivers. They adored property; their minds ran on possession; they
+were domestic materialists. We talked of socialism, of Bully Hayes, of
+Royat, of Rudyard Kipling. He regretted greatly not having seen the
+author of _Plain Tales from the Hills_.
+
+"He was once coming here. Even now I believe there is mail-matter of his
+rotting at the post-office."
+
+I asked him to accept a book I had brought from England, hoping to be
+able to give it to him. It was the only book of mine that I thought
+worthy of his acceptance. That he knew it pleased me. But he always
+desired to please, and pleased without any effort. When the boy came
+back from viewing the internal arrangements of the _Monowai_, he sat
+down with us as a free warrior. He was more a friend than a servant;
+Stevenson treated him as the head of a clan in his old home might treat
+a worthy follower. As there was yet an hour before the vessel sailed I
+went on shore with him again. We were rowed there by a Samoan in a
+waistcloth. His head was whitened by the lime which many of the natives
+use to bleach their dark locks to a fashionable red.
+
+The air was hot and the sea glittered under an intense sun. The rollers
+from the roadstead broke upon the reef. The outer ocean was a very
+wonderful tropic blue; inside the reefs the water was calmer, greener,
+more unlike anything that can be seen in northern latitudes. A little
+island inside the lagoon glared with red rock in the sunlight; cocoanut
+palms adorned it gracefully; beyond again was the deeper blue of ocean;
+the island itself, a mass of foliage, melted beautifully into the lucid
+atmosphere. Yonder, said Stevenson, lay Vailima that I was not to see.
+But I had seen the island and the man, and the natural colour and glory
+of both.
+
+As we went ashore he handed the book which I had given him to his
+follower. He thought it necessary to explain to me that etiquette
+demanded that no chief should carry anything. And etiquette was rigid
+there.
+
+"Mrs Grundy," he remarked, "is essentially a savage institution."
+
+We went together to the post-office. And in the street outside, while
+many passed and greeted "Tusitala" in the soft, native speech, we
+parted. I saw him ride away, and saw him wave his hand to me as he
+turned once more into the dark grove wherein I had met him in the year
+of his death.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY IN CAPETOWN
+
+
+I went across the Parade, which every morning is full of cheap-jack
+auctioneers selling all things under the sun to Kaffirs, Malays,
+coolies, towards Rondebosch and Wynberg. At the Castle the electric tram
+passed me, and I jumped on board and went, at the least, as fast as an
+English slow train. The wind was blowing and the dust flew, but ahead of
+us ran a huge electricity-driven water-cart, a very water tram, which
+laid the red clouds for us. Yet in London we travel painfully in
+omnibuses and horse-trams, and the rare water-cart is still drawn by
+horses.
+
+The road towards Rondebosch, where Mr Rhodes lived, is full of interest.
+It reminded me dimly of a road in Ceylon: the colour of it was so red,
+and the reddish tree trunks and heavy foliage were almost tropical in
+character. Many of the houses are no more than one-storey bungalows;
+half the folks one saw were coloured; a rare Malay woman flaunted
+colour like a tropic bird. Avenues of pines resembled huge scrub; they
+cast strong shadows even in the greyness of the day. Far above the huge
+ramparts of Table Mountain lay the clouds, and the wind whistled
+mournfully from the organ pipes of the Devil's Peak. In unoccupied lands
+were great patches of wild arum, and suddenly I saw the gaunt Australian
+blue gum, which flourishes here just as well as the English oak. Two
+white gums shone among sombrest pines. They took my mind suddenly back
+to the bush of the Murray Hills, for there they gleam like sunlit
+lighthouses among the darker and more melancholy timber of the heights.
+
+The houses grew fewer and fewer beyond Rondebosch, and at last we came
+to Wynberg, a quiet little suburban town. The tram ran through and
+beyond it, and I got off and walked for a while among the side roads.
+And the aspect of the country was so quiet, and yet so rich, that I
+wondered how any could throw doubts upon the wonderful value of the
+country. Surely this was a spot worth fighting for, and, more certainly
+still, it was a place for peace. A long contemplative walk brought me
+back to Rondebosch, and again I took the train-like tram and went back
+to busy Capetown.
+
+In any new town the heights about and above it appeal strongly to every
+wanderer. I had no time to spare for the ascent of Table Mountain, and
+the tablecloth of clouds indeed forbade me to attempt it. But someone
+had spoken to me of the Kloof road, which leads to the saddleback
+between the Lion's Head and Table Mountain, so, taking the Kloof Street
+tram, I ran with it to its stopping-place and found the road. There the
+houses are more scattered; the streets are thin. But about every house
+is foliage; in every garden are flowers. As I mounted the steep,
+well-kept road I came upon pine woods. Across the valley, or the Kloof,
+I saw the lower grassy slopes of Table Mountain, where the trees
+dwindled till they dotted the hill-side like spare scrub. Above the
+trees is a cut in the mountain, above that the bare grass, and then the
+frowning weather-worn bastions of the mountain with its ancient
+horizontal strata. It is cut and scarped into gullies and chimneys; for
+the mountain climber it offers difficult and impossible climbs at every
+point. Down the upper gullies hung wisps of ragged cloud, pouring over
+from the plateau 4000 feet above the town.
+
+On the left of the true Table Mountain there is a rugged and ragged
+dip, and further still the rocks rise again in the sharper pinnacles of
+the Devil's Peak. That slopes away till it runs down into the
+house-dotted Cape flats, and beyond it lie Rondebosch, Wynberg and
+Constantia. Across the grey and misty flats other mountains
+rise--mountains of a strange shape which suggests a peculiar and unusual
+geological formation.
+
+Although the day was cool and the southerly wind had a biting quality
+about it, yet the whole aspect of the world about me was intensely
+sub-tropical. In heavy sunlight it would seem part of the countries
+north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The close-set trees, seen from above,
+appear like scrub, like close-set ti-tree. They are massed at the top,
+and among them lie white houses. Beyond them the lower slopes of the
+Devil's Peak are yellow and red sand, but the grey-green waters of the
+bay, which is shaped like a great hyperbola, are edged with white sand.
+
+Among the pines the rhythmic wind rose and fell; it whistled and wailed
+and died away. Beneath me came the faint sound of men calling; there was
+the clink of hammers upon stone.
+
+But suddenly the town was lost among the trees, and when I sat down at
+last upon a seat I might have been among the woods above the Castle of
+Chillon, and, seen dimly among the foliage, the heights yonder could
+have been taken for the slopes of Arvel or Sonchaud. A bird whistled a
+short, repeated, melancholy song, and suddenly I remembered I had seen
+no sparrows here. A blackcap stared at me and fled; its triple note was
+repeated from bush to bush.
+
+The wind rose again as I sat, but did not chill me in my sheltered
+hollow. It rose and fell in wavelike rhythm like the far thunder of
+waves upon a rock-bound coast. Then came silence, and again the wind was
+like the sound of a distant waterfall. There for one moment I caught the
+resinous smell of pine. It drew me back to the Rocky Mountains, and then
+to the woods above Zermatt, where I had last smelt that healthiest and
+most pleasing of woodland odours. I rose again and walked on.
+
+Presently I gained a loftier height, and saw the Lion's Head above me, a
+bold shield knob of rock rising out of silver trees, whose foliage is a
+pale glaucous green, resembling that of young eucalypti. Then, turning,
+I saw Capetown spread out beneath me, almost as one sees greater Naples
+from the Belvedere of the San Martino monastery. The whitish-grey town
+is furrowed into canyon-like streets. Beyond the town and over the flats
+was a view like that from Camaldoli. The foreground was scrub and pine
+and deep red earth, whereon men were building a new house. May fate send
+me here again when the sun is hot and the under world is all aglow!
+
+I came at last to the little wind-swept divide between Table Mountain
+and the Lion's Head. Here Capetown was lost to me, and I stood among
+sandy wastes where thin pines and whin-like bushes grow. And further
+still was the cold grey sea with the waves breaking on a rocky point and
+a little island all awash with white water.
+
+Though beyond this divide the air was cold as death, the slopes of Table
+Mountain sweeping to the sea were full of colour; deep, strong, stern
+colour. When the sun shines and full summer rules upon the Cape
+Peninsula the place must be glorious. Even when I saw it an artist would
+wonder how it was that with such a chill wind the colour remained. And
+above the coloured lower slopes this new view of Table Mountain
+suggested a serried rank of sphinxes staring out across the desert sea.
+The nearest peak of the mountain is weathered, cracked and scarred, and
+it in are two chimneys that appear accessible only for the oreads who
+block the way with their smoky clouds. In the far north-eastern distance
+the grey headlands melted into the grey ocean. But beneath me were the
+tender green of the birch-like silver tree and the rich young leaves of
+the transplanted English oak.
+
+
+
+
+VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE
+
+
+Among the problems which remain perpetually interesting are those which
+deal with the influence of environment on races, and that of races on
+environment. What happens when the people are plastic and their
+circumstances rigid? What when the people are rigid and unyielding, and
+their surroundings fluent and unabiding? And does character depend on
+what is outside, or does the dominant quality of a race remain, as some
+vainly think, for ever? These are puzzling questions, but not entirely
+beyond conjecture for one who has heard the siren songs of the African
+veldt, the Australian plain, and the American prairie.
+
+He who consciously observes usually observes the obvious, and may rank
+as a discoverer only among the unobservant. Truth may be looked for, but
+he who hunts her shall rarely find when the truth he seeks is something
+not suited for scientific formulæ. The real observer is he who does not
+observe, but is gradually aware that he knows. Sometimes he does not
+learn that he is wise till long years have passed, and then perhaps the
+mechanical maxim of a mechanical eye-server of Nature shall startle him
+into a sense of deep abiding, but perhaps incommunicable, knowledge. So
+comes the knowledge of mountain, moor and stream; so rises the Aphrodite
+truth of the sea, born from the foam that surges round the Horn, or
+floats silently upon the beach of some lonely coral island; and so grows
+the knowledge of vast stretches of dim inland continents.
+
+I spent my hours (let them be called months) in Africa seeking vainly
+after facts that after all were of no importance. Politics are of
+to-day, but human nature is of eternity. And while I sought what I could
+hardly find, in one cold clear dawn I stumbled upon the truth concerning
+the white people of the veldt, whom we call Boers. And yet it was not
+stumbling; I had but rediscovered something that I had known of old in
+other lands, far east and far west of Africa. When first I entered on
+the terraces of the Karroo I tried to build up for myself the character
+of the lone horsemen who ride across these spaces, and though I was
+solitary, and saw sunrises, the construction of the type eluded me. I
+saw the big plain and the flat-topped banded hills that had sunk into
+their minds. I saw the ruddy dawn glow, and the ruddier glory of sundown
+as the sun bit into the edge of the horizon, and I knew that here
+somewhere lay the secret of the race, even though I could not find it.
+And I knew too that I had discovered sister secrets in long past days;
+and I saw that, not in the intellect as one knows it, but in some
+revived instinct, revived it might be by one of the senses, lay the clue
+to what I sought. What did these people think, or what lay beneath
+thought in them? It was something akin to what I had felt somewhere,
+that I knew. But the sun went down and left me in the dark; or it rose
+clear of the distant hills and drowned me in daylight, and still I did
+not know. Then there was the babble of politics in my ears, and I spoke
+of Reform and such urgent matters in the dusty streets of windy
+Johannesburg.
+
+But one day, as it chanced, I came upon the secret; and then I found it
+was incommunicable, as all real secrets are. For your true secret is an
+informing sensation, and no sensation can resolve itself other than by
+negatives. I had spent a weary, an unutterably weary, day in a coach
+upon the Transvaal uplands, and came in the dark to the house of a Boer
+who served travellers with unspeakable food and gave them such
+accommodation as might be. It was midnight when I arrived, and all his
+beds were full of those who were journeying in the opposite direction.
+He made me a couch on the floor in a kind of lumber-room, and, softened
+child of civilisation that I had become, I growled by myself at what he
+gave, and wondered what, in the name of the devil who wanders over the
+earth, I was doing there. And how could he endure it? How, indeed. I
+fell asleep, and the next minute, which was six hours later, I awoke,
+and stumbled with a dusty mouth into the remaining night, not yet become
+dawn. Such an hour seemed unpropitious. My bones ached; I lamented my
+ancient hardness in the time when a board or a sheet of stringy bark was
+soft; I felt a touch of fever, my throat was dry, a hard hot day of
+discomfort was before me. In the dim dusk I saw the mules gathered by
+the coach, which had yet to do sixty miles. A bucket invited me; I
+washed my hot hands and face, and walked away from the buildings into
+the open. Then very suddenly and without any warning I understood why
+the Boer existed, and why, in his absurd perversity, he rather
+preferred existing as he was; and I saw that even I, like other
+Englishmen, could be subdued to the veldt. The air was crisp and chill;
+the dawn began to break in a pale olive band in the lower east; the
+stars were bright overhead; the morning star was even yet resplendent.
+But these things I had seen on the southern Karroo. It was not my eyes
+alone that told me the old secret, the same old secret that I had known.
+I knew then, and at once, as an infinite peace poured over me, that all
+my senses were required to bring me back to nature, and that one alone
+was helpless. Now with what I saw came what I heard. I heard the clatter
+of harness, the jingle of a bell, the low of a cow, the trampling of the
+mules. And I smelt with rapture, with delight, the complex odours of the
+farm that sat so solitary in the world; but above all the chill moving
+odour of the great plain itself. This, or these, made a strange,
+primitive pleasure that I had known in Australia, in Texas, even in a
+farm upon the edge of a wild Westmorland moor. My senses informed my
+intellect. I shook hands with the creatures of the veldt, for I was of
+their tribe. Even my feet trod the earth pounded by the mules, the
+horses and the oxen, with a sensation that was new and old. Why did not
+spurs jingle on my heels? I felt strong and once more a man. So feels
+the Boer, and so does he love, but he cannot even try to communicate the
+incommunicable. For, after all, the secret is like the smell of a flower
+that few have seen. Its odour is not the odour of the rose, not that of
+any lily, not that of any herb; it is its own odour only.
+
+What is the difference, then, in those who ride the high Texan plateaux
+or scour the sage-bush plains of Nevada, or follow sheep or cattle in
+the salt bush country of the lingering Lachlan? There is much
+difference; there is little difference; there is no difference. The
+great difference is racial, the small difference is human, the lack of
+any difference is animal and primæval. In all alike, in any country
+where spaces are wide, the child that was the ancestor of the man arises
+with its truthful unconscious curiosity and faith in Nature. Here it may
+be that one gallops, here one trots, here again one walks. But all alike
+pull the bridle and snuff the air and find it good, and see the grass
+grow or dwindle, and watch the stars and the passing seasons, and find
+the world very fresh and very sweet and very simple.
+
+
+
+
+NEAR MAFEKING
+
+
+To a man who has lived and travelled in the United States of America and
+the not yet United States of Australia, there is one characteristic of
+South Africa which is particularly noticeable. It is its oneness as a
+country. And this oneness is all the more remarkable when we take into
+consideration its racial and political divisions. A bird's-eye view of
+America is beyond one; a similar glance at the seaboard of Australia
+from Rockhampton even round to Albany (which is then only round half its
+circle) gives me a mental crick in the neck. But in thinking of Africa,
+south of the Zambesi, there is no such mental difficulty. Even the
+existence of the Transvaal seemed to me an accident, and, if inevitable,
+one which Nature herself protests against. Some day South Africa must be
+federated, but if any politician asks me, "Under which king, Bezonian,
+speak or die," I shall elect (in these pages at least) to die.
+
+But though this disunited unity seemed to me a salient feature in
+cis-Zambesian Africa, it was the differences in that natural ring fence
+which attracted most of my attention as a story-writer even as a
+story-writer who so far has only written one tale about it. I began to
+ask myself how it was that, with one eminent exception, our African
+fiction writers had confined themselves to the native races, and the
+friction between these races and white men, Boer or English, when there
+were infinitely more attractive themes at hand. Perhaps it may seem like
+begging the question to call the political inter-play of the Cape
+Colony, of the Transvaal, and the Free State more interesting than tales
+in which the highest "white" interest appears in a love story betwixt
+some English wanderer and an impossible Boer maiden, or such as relate
+the rise and fall of Chaka and Ketchwayo. And yet to me the mass of
+intrigue, the political friction, the onward march of races, and the
+conflicts above and below board, called for greater attention than the
+Zulu, even at his best.
+
+To a novelist (who sometimes pretends to think, however much such an
+unpopular tendency be hidden) environment and its necessary results are
+of infinite interest. Upon the Karroo, even when in the train, I tried
+to build up the aloof and lonely Boer, and, though I failed, there came
+to me in whiffs (like far odours borne on a westerly wind) some
+suggestions that I really understood deep in my mind how he came to be.
+The chill fresh air of the morning, before the sun was yet above the
+horizon, recalled to me some ancient dawns in far Australia: and then
+again I thought of days upon the Texan plateaux. But still the secret of
+the lone-riding Boer, who loves a country of magnificent distances,
+escaped me.
+
+But one early dawn, when I was half-way between Krugersdorp and
+Mafeking, I came out upon the veldt in darkness, which was a lucid
+darkness, and in the silent crisp air I stumbled upon the truth. Betwixt
+sleep and waking as I walked I felt infinite peace pour over me. So had
+the silent Campo Santo at Pisa affected me; so had I felt for a moment
+among the ancient ruins of the abbey at Rivaulx. In this dawn hour came
+a time of reversion. I too was very solitary, and loved my solitude. The
+necessities of civilisation were necessities no more: I needed luxury
+even less than I needed news. I cared for nothing that the men of a city
+ask: there was space before me and room to ride. The lack of small
+urgent stimuli, the barren growth of civilisation's weedy fields, left
+me to the great and simple organic impulses of the outstretched world.
+And in that moment I perceived that this silence is the very life of the
+wandering Boer, even though he knows it not; for it has sunk so deep
+into him that he is unaware of it. He belongs not to this age, nor to
+any age we know.
+
+For one long year, twenty years ago, I lived upon a great plain in
+Australia, and now I remembered how slowly I had been able to divest
+myself of my feeling of loneliness. But when I came at last to be at
+home upon that mighty stretch of earth, which seemed a summit, I grew to
+love it and to see with opened eyes its infinite charm that could be
+told to none. I knew that the need of much talk was a false need: as
+false as the diseased craving for books.
+
+To feel this was true of the widespread wandering folks who once came
+out of crowded Holland to resume a more ancient type, instructed me in
+what a false relation they stand to the rolling dun war-cloud of
+"Progress." They called in the unreverted Hollander to stand between
+them and the men of mines, and now they love the Hollander as a man
+loves a hated cousin, who is a man of his blood, but in nothing like
+him. But anything was, and is, better than to stand face to face with
+busy crowds. To have to talk, to argue, to explain to the unsympathetic
+was overmuch. The veldt called to them: it is their passion. As one
+labours in London and sinks into a dream, remembering the hills wherein
+he spends a lonely summer, among Westmorland's fells and by the becks,
+so the Boer, called cityward, looks back upon the wide and lonely veldt
+which is never too wide and never lonelier to him than to any of the
+beasts he loves to hunt.
+
+But the fauna disappear, and ancient civilisations crumble. And those
+who revert are once more overwhelmed by civilisation. It is a great and
+pathetic story, a story as old as the tales told in stone by the
+preserved remnants of prehistoric monsters.
+
+Yet, speaking of monsters, what is a stranger monster (to an eye that
+hates it or merely wonders) than the many-jointed Rand demon crawling
+along the line of banked outcrop? I saw it first by day, when it seemed
+an elongated wire-drawn Manchester in a pure air, but I remember it
+best as I saw it when returning from Pretoria. First I beheld the gleam
+of electric lights, and remembered the glow of Fargo in Eastern Dakota
+as I saw it across the prairie. Then the mines were no longer separate:
+they joined together and became like a fiery reptile, a dragon in the
+outcrop, clawing deep with every joint, wounding the earth with every
+claw, as a centipede wounds with every poisoned foot. The white residues
+gleamed beneath the moon, from every smoke stack poured smoke: the
+dragon breathed. Then the great white cyanide tanks were like bosses on
+the beast; the train stopped, and the battery roared. That night, for it
+was a silent and windless night, I heard forty miles of batteries
+beating on the beach of my mind like a great sea. And men laboured in
+the bowels of the earth for gold. But out upon the veldt it was very
+quiet, "quietly shining to the quiet moon." I understood then that it
+was no wonder if the simple and stolid Dutchman had a peculiar
+abhorrence for a town, which, even at night, was never at rest. In
+Johannesburg is neither rest, nor peace, nor any school for nobility of
+thought; it destroys the pleasures of the simple, and satisfies not the
+desires of those whose simplicity is their least striking feature.
+
+Upon the veldt and the Karroo, and even through the Mapani scrub country
+that lies north of Lobatsi, simplicity is the chief characteristic of
+the scenery. As I went by Victoria West (I had spent the night talking
+politics with the civillest Dutchmen) I came in early morning to the
+first Karroo I had seen. The air was tonic, like an exhilarating wine
+with some wonderful elixir in it other than alcohol, and though the
+country reminded me in places of vast plains in New South Wales, it
+lacked, or seemed to lack, the perpetual brooding melancholy that
+invests the great Austral island. As I stood on the platform of the car,
+the sun, not yet risen, gilded level clouds. The light reddened and the
+gold died: and the sudden sun sparkled like a big star, and heaved a
+round shoulder up between two of Africa's flat-topped hills, which were
+yet blue in the far distance. Then the level light of earliest day
+poured across the plateau, yellow with thin grass, which began to ask
+for rain. The picture left upon my mind is without detail, and made up
+of broad masses. Even a railway station, with some few gum trees, and
+the pinky cloud of peach blossom about the little house, was
+excellently simple and homely. A distant farm, with smoke rising beneath
+the shadow of a little kopje, a band of emerald green, where irrigation
+sent its flow of water, a thousand sheep with a blanketed Kaffir minding
+them, filled the eye with satisfaction.
+
+Out of such a country should come simple lives. By the sport of fate the
+cruellest complexity of politics is to be found there.
+
+And yet who can declare that the environment shall not in time exert its
+inevitable influence on the busy crowding English, and make them or
+their sons glad to sit upon their stoeps and smoke and look out upon the
+veldt with a quiet satisfaction which is unuttered and unutterable? The
+Karroo and the veldt do not change except according to the seasons; they
+pour their influences for ever upon those who ride across them as the
+Drakensberg Mountains send their waters down upon Natal beneath their
+mighty wall. And even now the busy Englishman complains that his
+African-born son is lazy and seems more content to live than to be for
+ever working. Each country exacts a certain amount of energy from those
+who live there; as one judges from the Boer, the tax is not over heavy.
+
+And as in time to come the great centre of interest shifts north, as
+now it seems to shift, one may prophesy with some hope, certainly
+without dread of such a result, that a more energetic Dutch race, and a
+less energetic English one, will fuse together, and look back upon their
+childish quarrels with mere historic interest. Perhaps the Dutch in
+those times will become the aristocrats, as they have done in New York;
+they may even see their chance of going for ever out of politics. For
+they never yet sat down to the political gaming-table gladly.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE FRASER RIVER
+
+
+The first experience I had in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat,
+when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me
+round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated
+claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an
+occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt,
+which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased
+Mongolian. I went with my friend that same day into the Black Horse
+Mine, and saw quartz crushing for the first time; but, naturally enough,
+I took far more interest in the alluvial workings that can be managed by
+few friends than in operations which required capital and the
+importation of stamping machinery from England; and Ballarat, rich as it
+once was for the single miner, is now left to corporations.
+
+One of the strangest features of an old gold-mining district is its
+wasted and upturned appearance. The whole of the surrounding country is,
+as it were, eviscerated. It is all hills and hollows, which shine and
+glare in the hot sun and look exceedingly desolate. When, in addition,
+the town itself fails and fades for want of other means of support, and
+the houses fall into rack and ruin as I have seen in Oregon, the place
+resembles a disordered room seen in the morning after a gambling
+debauch. The town is happy which is able to reform and live henceforth
+on agriculture, as is now the case to a great extent with Ballarat and
+with Sandhurst, which has discarded its famous name of Bendigo.
+
+To a miner, or indeed to anyone in want of money, as I usually was when
+knocking about in Australian or American mining districts, the one
+painful thing is to know where untold quantities of gold lie without
+being able to get a single pennyweight of it. I remember on more than
+one occasion sitting on the banks of the Fraser River in British
+Columbia, or of the Illinois River in Oregon, pondering on the absurdity
+of my needing a hundred dollars when millions were in front of me under
+those fast-flowing streams. Those who know nothing about gold countries
+may ask how I knew there were millions there. The answer is simple
+enough. First let me say a few words about one common process of mining.
+
+When it is discovered that there is a certain quantity of gold in the
+vast deposits of gravel which are found in many places along the Pacific
+slope, but especially in Oregon and California, water, brought in a
+"flume" or aqueduct from a higher level, is directed, by means of a pipe
+and nozzle fixed on a movable stand, against the crumbling bench, which
+perhaps contains only two or three shillings-worth of gold to the ton.
+This is washed down into a sluice made of wooden boards, in which
+"riffles," or pieces of wood, are placed to stop the metal as it flows
+along in the turbid rush of water. Some amalgamated copper plates are
+put in suitable places to catch the lighter gold, or else the water
+which contains it is allowed to run into a more slowly-flowing aqueduct,
+which gives the finer scales time to settle. This, roughly put, is the
+hydraulic method of mining which causes so much trouble between the
+agricultural and mining interests in California; for the finer detritus
+of this washing, called technically "slickens," fills up the rivers,
+causes them to overflow and deposit what is by no means a fertilising
+material on the pastures of the Golden State.
+
+Now, what man does here in a small way, and with infinite labour and
+pains, Nature has been doing on a grand scale for unnumbered centuries.
+Let us, for instance, take the Fraser River and its tributary the
+Thompson, which is again made up of the North and South Forks, which
+unite at Kamloops, as the main rivers do at Lytton. The whole of the
+vast extent of mountainous country drained by these streams is known to
+be more or less auriferous. Many places, such as Cariboo, are, or were,
+richly so; and there are few spots in that part which will not yield
+what miners know as a "colour" of gold--that is, gold just sufficient to
+see, even if it is not enough to pay for working by our slight human
+methods. I have been in parts of Oregon where one might get "colour" by
+pulling up the bunches of grass that grew sparsely on a thin soil which
+just covered the rocks. But the united volumes of the Fraser and the two
+Thompsons and all their tributaries have been doing an enormous
+gold-washing business for a geological period; and all that portion of
+British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar
+to the bench of gravel which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And
+just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through
+his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the
+natural sluice which is known as the Fraser Canyon.
+
+This canyon, which is cut through the range of mountains known
+erroneously as the Cascades, is about forty miles long, if we count from
+Lytton and Yale. In its narrowest part, at Hell Gate, a child may throw
+a stone across; and its current is tremendous. So rapidly does it run,
+that no boat can venture upon it, and nothing but a salmon can stem its
+stream. It is full, too, of whirlpools; and at times the under rush is
+so strong that the surface appears stationary. What its depth may be it
+is impossible to tell. But one thing is certain, and that is, that in
+the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities
+beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No,
+it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper canyon, there is a
+place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built
+up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will,
+perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the shade.
+Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on
+that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Canyon, on the South Fork of
+the Thompson, when that clear blue stream was at a low stage, there was
+a great landslip, which for some eighty minutes dammed back the waters
+into a lake. The whole country side gathered there with carts and
+buckets, scraping up the mud and gold from the bottom. Many thousands of
+dollars were taken out of the dry river bed before the dam gave way to
+the rising waters. And, if there was gold there, what is there even now
+in the great main sluice of the vastest natural gold mining concern ever
+set going, which has never yet since it began indulged in a "cleanup?"
+
+I have been asked sometimes, when speaking about the Fraser and other
+rivers, which are undoubtedly gold traps, why it was that nobody
+attempted to turn them. Of course, my questioners were neither engineers
+nor geographers. Certainly an inspection of the map of British Columbia
+would show the utter impossibility of such a scheme. To dam the Fraser
+would be like turning the Amazon. Yet once I do not doubt that it was
+dammed, and that all the upper country was a vast lake, until the
+waters found the way through the Cascades which it has now cut into a
+canyon. Otherwise I cannot account for the vast benches and terraces
+which rise along the Thompson. Indeed, the whole of the Dry Belt down to
+Lytton has the appearance, to an eye only slightly cognisant of
+geological evidence, of an ancient lacustrine valley.
+
+Yet much work of a similar kind to damming this river has been done in
+California; and even now there is a company at the great task of turning
+the Feather River (which is also undoubtedly gold bearing) through a
+tunnel in order to work a large portion of its bed. Whether they will
+succeed or not is perhaps doubtful; but if they do, the returns will
+probably be large, as they would be if anyone were able to turn aside
+the Illinois in Southern Oregon, or the Rogue River, which has been
+mining in the Siskiyou Range for untold generations.
+
+I feel certain that all human gold discovering has been a mere nothing;
+that our methods are only faint and feeble imitations of Nature, and
+that only by circumventing her shall we be able to reach the richer
+reward. But by the very vastness of her operations we are precluded
+from imitating the sluice robber, who does not work himself, but "cleans
+up" the rich boxes of some mining company which has undertaken a scheme
+too large for any one man.
+
+
+
+
+OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
+
+
+The whole of this vast country--this sea of mountains, as it has very
+appropriately been called--used practically to belong to the Hudson's
+Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and
+its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were,
+and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the
+forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were
+so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the
+trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all
+the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially
+unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired
+by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost
+incredible price, as it seems to us now, for the company made sure of
+three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally
+more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds
+when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London
+market.
+
+Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in
+Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government.
+The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old
+miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the
+hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor,
+and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in
+keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew
+round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who
+said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six
+pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them
+had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too,
+some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for
+packing food on their backs to the mines they received a dollar for
+every pound weight they brought in.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a
+living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He
+was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought
+into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000
+dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never
+returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out
+in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold
+was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however,
+than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers after the old
+exciting times and the prospects of the gold-miner's toast, "Here's a
+dollar to the pan, the bed-rock pitching, and the gravel turning blue."
+
+Nowadays there are still plenty of men who traverse the country in all
+directions looking for new finds. They are called "prospectors," and go
+about with a pony packed with a pick, a shovel, and a few necessaries,
+hunting chiefly for quartz veins, and they talk of nothing but "quartz,"
+"bed-rock," "leads," gold and silver, and so many ounces to the ton. It
+is now many years ago since I was working on a small cattle ranch in the
+Kamloops district, when one of these men, a tall, grey-haired old fellow
+named Patterson, came by. My employer knew him, and asked him to stay.
+He bored us to death the whole evening, and showed innumerable
+specimens, which truly were not very promising, as it seemed to us. His
+great contempt for farming was very characteristic of the species.
+"What's a few head of rowdy steers?" asked Mr Patterson; "why, any day I
+might strike ten thousand dollars." "Yes," I answered mischievously;
+"and any day you mightn't." He turned and glared at me, demanding what I
+knew about mining. "Not a great deal," said I; "but I have seen mining
+here and in Australia, and for one that makes anything a hundred die
+dead broke." "Well," he replied, scornfully "I'd rather die that way
+than go ploughing, and I tell you I know where there is money to be
+made. Just wait till I can get hold of a capitalist."
+
+That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general
+rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat"
+speculations.
+
+Next morning Mr Patterson proposed that I should go along with him and
+he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this
+time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least
+particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted
+to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that
+means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I
+shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of
+contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found
+dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.
+
+Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Washington Territory
+there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for
+the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold
+fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the
+creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when
+I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything
+out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and
+in rags.
+
+Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a
+great extent, though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good
+thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be
+in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of
+ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that
+a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from
+England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done,
+was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good
+style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins
+and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were
+miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up
+his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a
+draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his
+napkin and put it in his breast pocket.
+
+The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their
+virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine--and a
+remarkably intelligent woman she was--one day remarked to me that before
+white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a
+Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was all gone. It is true
+enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her
+class, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too.
+A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke
+contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs ----, being a full-blooded
+Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after
+overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.
+
+As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially
+those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of
+degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to
+supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all
+times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to
+continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often
+dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one
+handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the
+Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on
+the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.
+
+The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of
+the pilotage and engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains
+are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at
+the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and
+those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes
+exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was
+certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a
+"riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great
+swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How
+much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.
+
+"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we
+shall never make the riffle on that."
+
+The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we
+approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.
+
+"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.
+
+The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought
+to bear.
+
+"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"
+
+"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.
+
+On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which
+tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one
+position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted
+for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on
+the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed
+would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked
+at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last.
+But I confess I did feel nervous.
+
+This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the
+tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her
+drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big
+rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with
+everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew
+and passengers were killed outright or drowned.
+
+Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached.
+That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the
+lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the
+_Peerless_ ran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to
+see if it could be done. The down-stream trip was done in three hours,
+but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had
+to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to
+make the trip regularly.
+
+As for the river in the main Fraser canyon, it is nothing more nor less
+than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the
+lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built
+a boat to run on it, the first time the _Skuzzy_ let go of the bank she
+ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The
+railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr
+Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He
+said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a
+thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was
+refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been
+a very hazardous undertaking--as bad as, or even worse than, the _Maid
+of the Mist_ going through the rapids below Niagara.
+
+
+
+
+A TALK WITH KRUGER
+
+
+It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in
+Pretoria. There was an air of lassitude about the town. President Steyn,
+of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch
+still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had
+ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch
+as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to
+meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened
+wisdom brought about the compact. As for myself, I thought little enough
+of the matter then, for Pretoria seemed curiously familiar to me, though
+I had never been there, and had never so much as seen a photograph of it
+until I saw one in Johannesburg. For some time I could not understand
+why it seemed familiar. It is true that it had some resemblance to a
+tenth-rate American town in which the Australian gum-trees had been
+acclimatised, as they have been in some malarious spots in California.
+And in places I seemed to recall Americanised Honolulu. Yet it was not
+this which made me feel I knew Pretoria. It was something in the aspect
+of the people, something in the air of the men, combined doubtless with
+topographical reminiscence. And when I came to my hotel and had settled
+down, I began to see why I knew it. The whole atmosphere of the city
+reeked of the very beginnings of finance. It was the haunt of the
+concession-monger; of the lobbyist; of the men who wanted something.
+These I had seen before in some American State capitals; the anxious
+face of the concession-hunter had a family likeness to the man of
+Lombard Street: the obsession of the gold-seeker was visible on every
+other face I looked at.
+
+In the hotels they sat in rows: some were silent, some talked anxiously,
+some were in spirits and spoke with cheerfulness. It pleased my solitary
+fancy to label them. These had got their concessions, they were going
+away; these still hoped strongly, and were going to-morrow and
+to-morrow; these still held on, and were going later; these again had
+ceased to hope, but still stayed as a sickened miner will hang round a
+played-out claim. They were all gamblers, and his Honour the President
+was the Professional Gambler who kept the House, who dealt the cards,
+and too often (as they thought) "raked in the pot," or took his heavy
+commission. And I had nothing to ask for; all I wanted was to see the
+tables if I could, and have a talk with him who kept them.
+
+The President is an accessible man. He does not hide behind his dignity:
+he affects a patriarchal simplicity, and is ever ready to receive his
+own people or the stranger within his gates. His unaffected affectation
+is to be a simpleton of character: he tells all alike that he is a
+simple old man, and expects everyone to chuckle at the transparent
+absurdity of the notion. Was it possible, then, for me to see him and
+have a talk with him? I was told to apply to a well-known Pretorian
+journalist. As I was also a journalist of sorts, and not wholly unknown,
+it was highly probable he would assist me in my desire not to leave
+Pretoria without seeing the Father of his people. But my informant
+added: "The President will say nothing--he can say nothing in very few
+words. If you want him to talk, say 'Rhodes.'" I thanked my new hotel
+acquaintance and and said I would say "Rhodes" if it seemed necessary.
+And next afternoon I walked down Church Street with the journalist W----
+and came to the President's house. We had an appointment, and after
+waiting half-an-hour in the _stoep_ with four or five typical and silent
+Boers, Mr Kruger came out in company with a notorious Pretorian
+financier, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth
+more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies.
+And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to
+each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W----,
+who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant _taal_.
+
+If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have
+seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his
+face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and
+smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not
+always attain that accuracy of marksmanship supposed to be
+characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are
+not quite clean; his clothes were probably never intended to fit him.
+And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes
+from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity
+is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is
+sometimes seen under the _blouse_ of an old French peasant who still
+remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt
+face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt
+had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi.
+Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers
+crowned its heights, here before me was something that was passing away.
+But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening
+Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British
+Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he
+had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers
+chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had
+been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And
+so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely
+rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.
+
+Then we talked about Johannesburg, and the President puffed smoke
+against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a
+very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of
+the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and
+declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted,
+but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut
+off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed
+at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed
+again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot
+of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet.
+I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by saying that they
+had even more reason to be loyal than the English, seeing that if
+England were ousted from the Continent the Germans would come in; but he
+evaded the question at issue by asserting that if the Cape Dutch
+intrigued against the Queen he would neither aid nor countenance them.
+Then, as the conversation seemed in danger of languishing, I did what I
+had been told to do and mentioned Rhodes.
+
+It was odd to observe the instant change in the President's demeanour.
+He lost his stolidity, and became voluble and emphatic. Rhodes was
+evidently his sore point; and he abused him with fervour and with
+emphasis. All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes
+had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa
+would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose
+chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon
+and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked
+himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his
+declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of
+the journalist who was interpreting for me. Every time that heavy hand
+came down I saw poor W---- wince; he was shaken to his foundations. But
+he endured the punishment like a martyr, and said nothing. I dropped ice
+into the President's boiling mind by asking him if he thought it would
+remove danger from the situation if Mr Rhodes and Mr Chamberlain were
+effectually muzzled by the Imperial Government. His peasant-like caution
+instantly returned; he smoked steadily for a minute, and then declared
+he would say nothing on that point. It was not necessary; he had showed,
+without the shadow of a doubt, that he was an old man who was, in a
+sense, insane on one point. Rhodes was his fixed pathological idea. This
+Tenterden steeple was the cause of the revolutionary Goodwin Sands.
+
+As a last question about the Cape Dutch, I asked if, when he declared he
+would not aid them against the Queen, he would act against them; he
+replied denying in general terms the right to revolt. I said, "But the
+right of revolution is the final safeguard of liberty"; and his Honour
+did nothing but grunt. From his point of view he could neither deny nor
+affirm this safely, and so our interview came to an end.
+
+
+
+
+TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA
+
+
+At that time I acknowledge that trout-fishing as a real art I knew
+nothing of; whipping English waters had been almost entirely denied me,
+and with the exception of a week on a river near Oswestry, and a day in
+Cornwall, I had never thrown a fly over a pool where a trout might
+reasonably be supposed to exist. But in British Columbia I used to catch
+them in quantities and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by
+an expert) that using a grasshopper as a bait is no better than
+poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line,"
+or _Cocculus indicus_. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of
+the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to
+fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small
+tin can with those lively insects.
+
+Owing to the fact that I was working for my living on a ranch at Cherry
+Creek, I had no chance of fishing on week-days, but on Sundays, after
+breakfast, I used to take my primitive willow rod from the roof, where
+it had been for six days, see that the ten or twelve feet of string was
+as sound at least as my frayed yard of gut, examine my hook, and then
+start hunting grasshoppers. That meant a deal of violent exercise,
+especially if the wind was blowing, for they fly down it or are driven
+down it with sufficient velocity to make a man run. Moreover, near the
+ranche they were mostly of a very surprising alertness, owing,
+doubtless, to the fact that the fowls, in their eagerness to support
+Darwin's theory of natural selection, soon picked up the slow and lazy
+ones. But after an hour's hard work I usually got some fifty or so, and
+that would last for a whole day, or at anyrate for a whole afternoon.
+Then I went to the creek, fishing up it and down it with a democratic
+disregard of authority.
+
+Cherry Creek was only a small stream; here and there it rattled over
+rocks, and stayed in a deep pool. Now and again it ran as fast as the
+water in a narrow flume; and then the banks grew canyon-like for fifty
+yards. But for almost the whole of its length it went through dense
+brush, so dense in parts that it defied anyone but a bear to get through
+it. But when I did reach a secluded pool and manage to thrust my rod out
+over the water and slowly unwind my bait, I was almost always rewarded
+by a lively mountain trout as long as my hand, for they never ran over
+six inches. The grasshopper was absolutely deadly; no fish seemed able
+to resist it, and sometimes in ten minutes I took six, or even ten, out
+of a pool as big as an ordinary dining-room table. The fact of the
+matter is that the greatest difficulty lay in getting to the water. When
+I fished up stream into the narrow gorge through which the creek ran, I
+often walked four or five miles before I got the small tin bucket, which
+was my creel, half full; yet I knew that if I could have really fished
+five hundred yards of it I might have gone home with a full catch.
+
+But it was not so much the fishing as the strange solitude, the thick,
+lonely brush, that made such excursions pleasant. Every now and again I
+came to a spur of the mountains, and climbed up into the open and lay
+among the red barked bull-pines. If I went a little higher I could
+catch sight of the dun-coloured hills which ran down, as I knew, to the
+waters of Kamloops Lake, only five miles distant. If I felt hungry, I
+could easily light a fire and broil the trout; with a bit of bread,
+carried in my pocket, and a draught from a spring or the creek itself, I
+made a hearty meal. And all day long I saw no human being. Every now and
+again I might come across a half-wild bullock or a wilder horse, or see
+the track of a wolf, but that was all, save the song of the birds, the
+wind among the trees, and the ceaseless murmurs of the creek. In the
+evening I made my way back in time to give the cook what I had caught.
+
+In California I used to fish in the small creek running at the back of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, and, though the trout were by no
+means so plentiful there as in British Columbia, I often caught two or
+three dozen in the afternoon. But there I had to use worms, and they
+seemed far less attractive than the soft, sweet body of the grasshopper.
+Yet once I caught a very large fish for that part of the country. He was
+evidently a fish with a history, as I caught him in a big tank sunk in
+the earth, which supplied the ranch, and was itself supplied by a long
+flume. As I went home past this tank one day I carelessly dropped the
+bait in, and it was instantly seized by a trout I knew to be larger than
+I had yet hooked. But, though he was big, he had very little chance. The
+smooth sides of the tank afforded him no hole to rush for, and, after a
+short struggle, I hauled him out. My only fear was that my rotten line
+would part, for he weighed almost a pound, and I was accustomed to fish
+of less than seven ounces.
+
+I often wondered in British Columbia why so few people fished. In some
+of the creeks running into the Fraser River, near Yale, I have seen
+splendid trout of two or three pounds; there would be a dozen in sight
+at once very often. They always seemed in good condition, too, which was
+more than could be said for the salmon, for those were half of them very
+white with the fungus, as one could easily see on the Kamloops or
+Shushwap Lakes from the bows of the steamer if the water was smooth.
+
+Perhaps the reason there are no trout-fishers out there is that those
+who care sufficiently for any kind of sport find it more to their taste
+to hunt deer, bear or cariboo. When these have disappeared, as they
+must, seeing the ruthless manner in which they are slaughtered, many may
+be glad to take to the milder and less ferocious trout. The country
+certainly affords very good fishing, and the spring and summer climate
+is perfect. If it were only a little nearer they might be properly
+educated, until they were far too wary to fall into the simple traps
+laid for them by a man who fished with a piece of string and carried a
+bucket for a creel. It may have been my brutal ignorance of tying flies,
+but when I tried them with what I could furbish up, they seemed to
+resent the thing as an insult. So there seems some hope of their being
+capable of instruction.
+
+
+
+
+ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE
+
+
+When I went to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I
+could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York
+slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did
+not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by
+any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one
+spends enough money; but I was at that time in no position to sling
+dollars about, and, besides, I wanted some of the English rust knocked
+off me. Living in England ends in making a man poor of resource. I
+hardly know an ordinary Londoner who would not shiver at the notion of
+being "dead broke" in any foreign city, to say nothing of one on the
+other side of the world; and though it is not a pleasant experience it
+has some charms and many uses. It wakes a man up, shows him the real
+world again, and makes him know his own value once more. So I started
+for New York in rather a devil-may-care spirit, without the slightest
+chance of doing the business in comfort. And my misfortunes began at
+once in that city.
+
+To save time and money I went in the first quick vessel that
+crossed--the _Lucania_; and I went second-class. It was an experience to
+run twenty-two knots an hour; but it has made me greedy since. I want to
+do any future journeys in a torpedo-boat. As to the second-class crowd,
+they were, as they always are on board Western ocean boats, a set of
+hogs. The difference between first and second-class passengers is one of
+knowing when and where to spit, to put no fine point on it. I was glad
+when we reached New York on that account.
+
+I meant to stay there three days, but my business took me a fortnight,
+and money flowed like water. It soaked up dollars like a new gold mine,
+and I saw what I meant for the Eastern journey sink like water in sand.
+But I had to get to San Francisco. I took that journey in sections. All
+my trouble in New York was to get across the continent. I let the
+Pacific take care of itself, being sure I could conquer that difficulty
+when the time came. I recommend this frame of mind to all travellers. I
+acquired the habit myself in the United States when I jumped trains
+instead of paying my fare. It is most useful to think of no more than
+the matter in hand, for then we can use one's whole faculties at one
+time. Too much forethought is fatal to progress, and if I had really
+considered difficulties I could have stayed in England and written a
+story instead, a most loathsome _pis aller_.
+
+I do not mean to say that I was without money. All I do mean is that I
+had less than half that I should have had, unless I meant to cross the
+continent as a tramp in a "side-door Pullman," as the tramping
+fraternity call a box car, and the Pacific in the steerage. As a matter
+of fact, I proposed to do neither. I wanted a free pass over one of the
+American railroads, and if there had been time I should have got it. I
+tackled the agents, and "struck" them for a pass. I assured them that I
+was a person of illimitable influence, and that if I rode over their
+system, and simply mentioned the fact casually on my return, all Europe
+would follow me. I insinuated that their traffic returns would rise to
+heights unheard of: that their rivals would smash and go into the hands
+of receivers. It was indeed a beautiful, beautiful game, and reminded
+one of poker, but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't
+come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little
+time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco
+Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got
+euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of
+forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that
+ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap
+train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made
+me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very
+glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning
+not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds
+in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who
+cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith
+which was not unrewarded in the end.
+
+My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight
+till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney
+was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the
+transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of
+the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times and some rustling to get
+through it all. I had to rustle.
+
+As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was
+on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the
+slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was
+quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty
+rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which
+runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one
+station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the
+depôt of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always;
+I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And
+now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was
+like a buried city with dust and cinders.
+
+"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly
+porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."
+
+Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers
+mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted
+basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and
+discovered somebody underneath that at anyrate reminded me of myself,
+and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had
+gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.
+
+From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats
+with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the
+cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the
+conductor grinned.
+
+"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.
+
+So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I
+knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't
+have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one
+nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a
+racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I
+chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was
+going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I
+must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my
+H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about
+the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up
+greatly, and we were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras
+and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd
+picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the
+passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat
+at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The
+dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white
+sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable
+body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the
+elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for
+ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the
+daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly
+with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for
+the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently,
+and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a
+third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely
+needed. I went out to inspect the city.
+
+It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The
+gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt to the
+Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their
+monotonous ugliness into the sky.
+
+In this city I had starved for three solid months, picking up a meal
+where I could find it. I had been without a bed for three weeks. I had
+shared begged food with beggars. Now I came back to it under far
+different circumstances. I walked in the afternoon to some of my old
+haunts, and, coming to the hideous den of a common lodging-house where I
+had once lived, my flesh crept. I remembered that once the agent for a
+directory had put down "Charles Roberts, labourer," as living there and
+I tried to get back into my old skin. For a while I succeeded, but the
+experiment was horrible, and I was glad to drop the dead past and leave
+the grimy water front where I had looked and looked in vain for work.
+
+For a week I stayed in San Francisco. Then I had an experience which
+falls to few men, for I went to stay as a visitor at Los Guilucos, where
+I had once been a stableman. The situation was interesting, for there
+were still many men in the ranch who had worked with me; even the
+Chinese cook was there. In the old days he had often appealed to me for
+more wood to give his devouring dragon of a stove. But things were
+altered now. On the first morning of my stay I saw the wood pile, and
+could not help taking my coat off and lighting into it with the axe. The
+Chinaman came running out with uplifted hands.
+
+"Oh, Mr Loberts, Mr Loberts, you no splittee me wood, you too much welly
+kind gentleman, you no splittee me wood!"
+
+So things change, but I split him a barrow load all the same.
+
+I was sorry to leave the ranch and go back to San Francisco, where nine
+men out of ten in all degrees of society are much too disagreeable for
+words. The only really decent fellows I met there were a Frenchman and a
+young mining engineer named Brandt, son of Dr Brandt, at Royat, who was
+once R. L. Stevenson's physician; and above all an Irish surveyor and
+architect, the most charming and genial of men. The Californians
+themselves are less worth knowing as they appear to have money; the
+moment they begin to fancy themselves a cut above the vulgar, their
+vulgarity is their chief feature, stupendous as the Rocky Mountains, as
+obvious as the Grand Duke of Johannisberg's nose. But I had other things
+to think of than the social parodies of the Slope.
+
+I found at the Poste Restante a letter from my agent, which was a frank
+statement of misfortune and ill-luck. There was not a red cent in it,
+and I had only a hundred dollars left. This was just enough to pay my
+steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there
+was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one
+of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long
+article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new
+standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to
+wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times
+as high as in the West.
+
+I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me
+for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash
+a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never
+regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still
+retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information
+to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed,
+approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I
+washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man,
+who helped me over the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go
+steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my
+ante I meant staying with the game.
+
+For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend
+in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York
+for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old
+friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as
+important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I
+saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this
+gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short.
+It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty
+is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on
+the strength of it.
+
+In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have
+written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and
+it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the
+gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort,
+but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I
+found it was all right. I was not only all right, for inside of an hour
+I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for
+the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that
+I might have got it for less, but I have found it a good business rule
+never to lose a good thing by trying for a better. I had accommodation
+equal to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Of course, I regretted I
+dare not ask them one hundred dollars for condescending to go in their
+boat. If I had been full of money I might have tried it. However, I was
+quite happy and satisfied. That I might land in Sydney with nothing did
+not trouble me. Three days after I went on board the steamer, and was
+seen off by my friend the Irishman and one other.
+
+I had never sailed on the Pacific, or at least that part of it, before,
+and its wonders were strange to me. I had not seen coral islands, nor
+cocoanuts growing. It grieved me that I could not afford to stay in
+Honolulu and visit Kilauea. I only remained some hours, which I spent in
+prowling about the town, which is like a tenth-rate city in America. And
+the business American has his claw into it for good. The Hawaiians, in
+truth, seem to care little. They go blithely in the streets crowned and
+garlanded with flowers, and even the leprosy that strikes one now and
+again with worse than living death seems far away.
+
+On board the _Monowai_, most comfortable of ships, commanded by Captain
+Carey, best of skippers, life was easy and delightful. Our one romance
+was between San Francisco and the Islands, for an individual, with most
+incredible cheek, managed to go first-class from California almost to
+Honolulu without a ticket. Two days from the Islands he was bowled out,
+and set to shovel coals. We left him in gaol at Honolulu, and steamed
+south of Samoa.
+
+It was good to be at last in the tropics, deep into them, and to wear
+white all day and feel the heat tempered by the Trades. We played games
+and sang and lazed and loafed, and life had no troubles. Why should I
+think of future difficulties when there were none at hand, and the
+weather was lovely? We ran at last into Apia, the harbour of Upolu, the
+island where the late Robert Louis Stevenson lived. I rushed ashore, met
+him, spent three more than pleasant hours with him, and away again round
+the island reefs with our noses pointed for Auckland.
+
+Some of our passengers had left us at Honolulu, others dropped off at
+Samoa, but after Auckland, when the weather grew quite cold, we were a
+thin little band, and our spirits oozed away. We could not keep things
+lively, the decks seemed empty, I was glad to run into Sydney harbour. I
+found I had just enough money to get to Melbourne if I went at once, so
+I caught the mail train and soon smelt the Australian bush that I had
+left in 1878. On reaching Melbourne at mid-day I had fifteen shillings
+left. Dumping my baggage at the station, I hunted up my chief friend, a
+journalist. The very first thing he handed me was a cablegram demanding
+my instant return to England. My rage can be imagined; it would take
+strong language to describe it, for I had meant to stay in Australia for
+a year, and write a book about it from another standpoint than _Land
+Travel and Seafaring_.
+
+I hadn't even enough money to live anywhere. I couldn't cable for any,
+for if my instructions had been obeyed, all available cash was now on
+its way to me, when I couldn't wait for it. I talked it over with my
+friend.
+
+"Have you no money?" I asked, but then I knew he had none.
+
+"Nobody has any money in Australia," he answered. "If it is known you
+have a sovereign in cash you will be pestered in Collins Square by
+millionaires, whose wealth is locked up in moribund banks, for mere
+half-crowns as a temporary accommodation."
+
+I pondered a while.
+
+"I have a plan whereby we may get a trifle in the meantime. You can
+write a long interview with me and I will take the money. Sit down and
+don't move."
+
+He remonstrated feebly.
+
+"My dear fellow, why not do it yourself?"
+
+"It would be taking a mean advantage of other writers," I said.
+"Besides, I'm in no mood to write."
+
+Overcome by my generosity, he at last wrote a column and a half. I shall
+always treasure that interview, for when he tired I dictated some of it
+myself. The only thing I really objected to was his determination not to
+let me say what I meant to say about the Australian financial outlook.
+Under the circumstance of the failure of credit, the matter touched me
+deeply, and was a personal grievance. But he persisted that if I were
+too pessimistic the article would never see type, and I couldn't have
+the money. I gave way, and condescended to have hopes about Australia.
+But even when I got his cheque I was not much further forward.
+
+I went to my banker's agents and asked them to cash a cheque. Would I
+pay for a cable home and out? No I would not, because I didn't know
+whether my account was overdrawn or not. All I knew was that if they
+would cash a cheque I would telegraph from Port Said or Naples and see
+it was met. So that failed. I tried Cook's, who had cashed cheques for
+me on the Continent. They also spoke of cabling. I explained matters,
+but they had no faith. Nobody had.
+
+I began to think I would have to work my passage, for I was determined
+to get away inside of two weeks or perish. I looked up the vessels in
+port in case I might know some of them. They were all strangers. In such
+cases, unless one is in a hurry such as I was, for my return was urgent,
+it is best to tackle some cargo boat. It is often possible to get a
+passage for a quarter the mail-boat fare, for the tramp steamer's
+captain looks on the fare as his own and never mentions passengers to
+the owner. But I couldn't wait for a good old tramp, and at last, in
+despair, my friend and a friend of his and I clubbed everything together
+that was valuable and raised a fare to Naples on the proceeds. I left
+Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and
+got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse
+snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we
+caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the
+breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend. I
+raised five pounds on a cheque with the steward and spent the whole of
+it in rickshaws and carriages. I saw what one could in the time, for I
+breakfasted at one place, lunched at another, dined at a third. I mean
+one of these days to spend a week or two at the Galle Face Hotel,
+Colombo. At Mount Lavinia I got the one dinner of my life. I cordially
+recommend the cooking.
+
+We ran to Cape Guardafui in a gale, a sticky hot gale which made life
+unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied
+the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two
+Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But
+my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the
+vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand
+looked like snow-drifts. In the day the far-off deserts were a dream of
+red sands, and red sand mingled with the horizon. At last we came to the
+Mediterranean and I landed at Naples. The driver of my carrozzella took
+my last money, so I put up at a good hotel and wired to England at the
+hotel-keeper's expense. I went overland to London, and was back there in
+four days under four months from the time I started from New York.
+
+There are scores of people--I meet them every day--who are in a constant
+state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it
+is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to
+know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A
+first-class ticket from London _viâ_ New York, San Francisco, Sydney,
+Melbourne, Colombo, the Suez, Naples, Gibraltar and Plymouth will run to
+£125, without including the cost of sleeping-car accommodation and food
+in the American trans-continental journey. If he stays anywhere it is a
+mighty knowing and economical traveller who gets off under £200 or £250
+by the time he turns up in London.
+
+Now as to what it cost me when I meant doing it moderately. It cost £8
+to New York. Owing to business in New York I stayed there a fortnight,
+and it cost me $4 a day, say £11. The journey to San Francisco ran to
+£12 including provisions. The Pacific voyage was £22 in all. The fare
+from Sydney to Melbourne for ocean passengers is £2. 1s. 6d. To Naples I
+paid £32. Another £12 brought me to London. This runs up to £99.
+
+If I had not been in a hurry I could have done the homeward part for
+less. If I had been twenty-five I would have gone steerage. But with
+time to spare for looking up a tramp I might have easily got to London
+as the only passenger for £20. If I had not stayed in New York and had
+had the time I could have cut expenses to £70.
+
+But any young man, writer or not, who wants to see a bit of the world,
+can do it on that if he has the grit to rough it. He can cut the
+Atlantic journey to £3, and learn some things he never knew while doing
+it. I can put anyone up to crossing America for £15 at any time. But if
+he spends £20 he can see Niagara, the work of God, and Chicago, the
+_chef d'oeuvre_ of the Devil. The Pacific can be done for £20
+steerage; and he can stay in Australia a month for £10, and a year for
+£20 if he knows what I know. The steerage fare home is £16. I fancy it
+would be the best investment that any young fellow could make. He would
+learn more of what life is than the world of London would teach him in
+the ordinary grooves in ten years.
+
+
+
+
+BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS
+
+
+On Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, where I worked for six
+months in 1886, there was a very large orchard. I know how large it was
+on account of having to do much too much work with the apricots, plums
+and cherries; and day by day, as one fruit or the other ripened, I
+cursed the capable climate of the Pacific slope, which produced so
+largely. Fortunately, however, the lady who owned the ranch did not
+trouble her head greatly about the almonds, of which we had a very fine
+double avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and
+there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian
+vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had
+sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of
+picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday, and
+cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but
+for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember
+my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied
+themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the
+stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked
+suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree
+overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken
+and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to
+the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on
+the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big
+limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni
+walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe.
+Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just
+there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out
+a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of
+almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked
+them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground,
+for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower.
+Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every
+likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the
+avenue--sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite
+as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.
+
+Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies,
+who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable
+climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store
+up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never
+been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were
+inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never
+corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths
+of winter, why he had been fool enough to drop his savings into a bank
+with the conscience of an ill-regulated automatic machine, which takes
+everything and gives nothing back. If he had really needed the almonds,
+they would have been put in an accessible spot. Though this perhaps is a
+scientific view, I must acknowledge that we were grateful to the birds
+who stored them for us, and, by making fools of themselves, gave us the
+opportunity of gathering, if not grapes from thistles, at least almonds
+from oaks.
+
+Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of
+the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn
+in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation
+commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage
+grubs--that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave
+these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is
+no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the
+jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an
+explanation--to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn
+mystery--is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated
+the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or
+accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into--indeed they will
+place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the
+bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid
+on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in
+so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holes they had
+themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the
+bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It
+must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find
+it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to
+have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder,
+less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there
+were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the
+Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there
+from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.
+
+
+
+
+IN CORSICA
+
+
+Once, no doubt, Corsica was a savage, untamed, untrimmed kind of
+country, and a man's life was little safer than it is to-day in the
+neighbouring island of Sardinia. There were brigands and bandits and
+families engaged in the private warfare of the vendetta, so that things
+were as lively and exciting as they get in parts of Virginia at times.
+Killing was certainly no murder, and even yet the vendetta flourishes to
+some extent. There is nothing harder than to get a high-spirited
+southern population ready to acknowledge the majesty of the law. The
+attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young
+East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his
+particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't
+be able to get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself.
+
+Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's
+time. French justice is a fairly good brand of justice after all. The
+magistrates administer the law, and the system of military roads all
+over the island makes it easy for the police to get about. When a
+criminal gets away from them he has to take to the hills and to keep
+there. It is such solitary fugitives who still give the stranger a
+notion that the country is essentially criminal. But he is a bandit, not
+a brigand. He may rob, but he does not kidnap. His idea of ransom is
+what is in a man's pockets, not what his Government will pay to prevent
+having his throat cut. After all, there is such a thing in England as
+highway robbery, and in Corsica robbery is usually without violence. If
+a bandit is treated as a gentleman he will be polite, even though he
+points a gun at a visitor's stomach and requests him to hand over all he
+happens to have about him.
+
+I went to Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of
+the island than I did. We landed at Bastia, where, by the way, Nelson
+also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the
+most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring,
+sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the
+most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for
+that matter, in the world. For the island is fertile and is yet barren;
+it is mountainous and has great stretches of plain in it along the
+eastern shore. Though it is but fifty miles across and little more than
+a hundred long, there is a real range of rugged high mountains in it,
+two of them, Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, being nearly 9000 feet high,
+while three others, Pagliorba, Padre and d'Oro are over 7000 feet. The
+rocks of these ranges are primary and metamorphic, and the scenery is
+bold. Yet it is kindly and gracious for the forests are thick. On the
+peaks, and in the recesses of the loftier forests, a wild black sheep,
+the mufflon, can still be hunted. And the tumbling streams and rivers
+are full of trout. There are few better trout streams in Europe than the
+Golo, which runs into the sea on the east coast through a big salt-water
+lagoon called Biguglia. When I saw it the stream was in fine order, and
+I longed to get out of the train to throw a fly upon it. For the island
+is now so civilised that a railway runs from Bastia across the summit of
+the island by the towns of Corte and Vivario down to Ajaccio. But when I
+and my friend were there the train only ran to Corte. We had to drive
+from there across the summit to Vivario, whither the rail had reached,
+in the western slope of the hills. Corte sits queen-like on the summit
+of the island, and is quiet and ancient. Yet some day it will be, like
+Orezza with its strong iron waters, a health resort. The French go more
+and more to Corsica, and the intruding English have what is practically
+an English hotel at Ajaccio. There is another in the forests of
+Vizzavona.
+
+It is a quick descent from the summit to Ajaccio, which lies smiling in
+its gulf, that is somewhat like one of the deep indentations of Puget
+Sound. We stayed there for a week and during that time took a
+_diligence_ and went up to Vico. It was on this little forty-mile
+journey among the hills that I saw most of Corsica's character. And at
+first it was curiously melancholy to me. As we drove inland we met
+numbers of the peasants, men and women, and at first it seemed as if a
+great epidemic must have devastated the country. Almost every woman we
+saw was in black. But this comes from a habit that they have of wearing
+black for three years after any of their relatives die. Even in a
+healthy country (and the lowlands, or the _plage_ of Corsica, is not
+healthy in summer) most families must lose a member in three years, and
+thus it happens that most of the women are in perpetual mourning. The
+solidarity of the family is great in Corsica. It must be or women would
+not renounce their natural and beautiful dress to adorn themselves with
+colours. It was curious to see at times some young girl not in mourning.
+I could not help thinking that she had an unfair advantage over her
+darkly-dressed fellows.
+
+We came at last to Vico in the hills, and found it picturesque to the
+last degree, and quite equally unsanitary. It was at once beautifully
+picturesque and foully offensive. Nothing less than a tropical
+thunderstorm could have cleansed it. But none of its inhabitants minded.
+They loafed about the deadly streams of filth and were quite unconscious
+of anything disagreeable in the air. A Spanish village is purity itself
+to such a place as Vico. But then the proud and haughty Corsicans object
+to doing any work except upon their own fields. If an ordinance had been
+passed to cleanse Vico's streets and that dreadful main drain, its
+stream from the hills, it would have been necessary to import Italians
+to do it. For all hard labour outside mere tillage is done by them. I
+would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at
+which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service.
+
+In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village
+higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here
+and there through _le maquis_, the scrub or bush of Corsica. And as we
+went we got a good view of many little mountain villages, which hang for
+the most part on the slope of the hills, being neither in the valley nor
+on the summit. We were high enough to be among the chestnuts; vineyards
+there were none. And at last we came to Renno, and found the villagers
+taking a sad holiday. I spoke to them in bad Italian, and found that it
+seemed good Corsican to them, perhaps even classical Corsican, if there
+be such a thing, and learnt that there had been a funeral of a little
+child that morning. They proposed to do no more work that day. Most of
+the men were loafing along a wall by their little inn, and they were
+soon reinforced by many women. In a few minutes the village had almost
+forgotten the funeral in the excitement of seeing two strangers,
+foreigners, Englishmen. They told us that so far as they remember no
+foreigner, not even a Frenchman, had been there before. Their village
+was indeed lost to the world; they looked on Vico, evil-smelling Vico,
+as a great, fine town: Ajaccio was a distant and immense city. But no
+one from Renno had been there. It was indeed possible that most of the
+inhabitants had never seen the sea. There was something touching in this
+quaint and simple isolation, and the men were simple too. I invited the
+whole male population of the place to drink with me at the poor little
+_cabaret_. The drink they took (it was the only drink save some sour
+wine) was white brandy at ten centimes the glass. To make friends in
+this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two
+francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small
+measure their curiosity about the world beyond _le maquis_, and beyond
+the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman,
+spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless
+in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing
+this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult
+point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of
+us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in
+Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke
+"Pondicherry?"
+
+Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other
+island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its
+native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and
+indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn
+off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to
+speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the
+vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and
+mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild
+black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law
+and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart. They
+are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians.
+And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics
+than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I
+know not with what accuracy, that most of the _mouchards_, or spies, and
+the _agents provocateurs_ of the French police, are Corsican by birth.
+But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the
+birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE MATTERHORN
+
+
+Owing to my having read very little Alpine literature, I have seen but
+few attempts to analyse the mental experiences of the novice who, for
+the first time, ascends any of the higher peaks. And having read nothing
+upon the subject I was naturally curious, while I was at Zermatt this
+last summer, as to what these experiences were. I may own frankly that
+the desire to find out had a great deal to do with my trying
+mountaineering. A writer, and especially a writer of fiction, has, I
+think, one plain duty always before him. He ought to know, and cannot
+refuse to learn, even at the cost of toil and trouble, all the ways of
+the human mind. And experience at second-hand can never be relied on.
+The average man is afraid of saying he was afraid. And the average
+climber is one who has long passed the interesting stage when he first
+faced the unknown. I was obviously a novice, and a green one, when I
+tried the Matterhorn. That I was such a novice is the only thing which
+makes me think my experience at all interesting from the psychological
+point of view. And to my mind that point of view is also the literary
+one.
+
+On looking back I certainly believe I was very much afraid of the
+mountains in general and of the Matterhorn in particular. It is
+difficult, however, to say where fear begins and mere natural
+nervousness leaves off. Fear, after all, is often the note of warning
+sounded by a man's organism in the face of the unknown. It is hardly
+strange it should be felt upon the mountains. But if I was afraid of the
+mountains (and I thought that I was) I was certainly curious. During my
+first week at Zermatt I had done a good second-class peak, but had been
+told that the difference between the first and second class was
+prodigious. This naturally excited curiosity. And I began to feel that
+my curiosity could only be satisfied by climbing the Matterhorn. For one
+thing that mountain has a great name; for another it looks inaccessible.
+And it had only been done once that year. If I did it I should be the
+first Englishman on the summit for the season. And the guides were
+doubtful whether it would "go."
+
+But, after all, was it not said by folks who climbed to the Schwartzsee
+that the mountain was really easy? Were not the slabs above the Shoulder
+roped? Did not processions go up it in the middle of the season? And yet
+it was now only the first of July and there was a good deal of new snow
+on the mountain. And why were the guides just a little doubtful? Perhaps
+they were doubtful of me; and yet Joseph Pollinger had taken me up three
+smaller peaks. I decided that I had hired him to do the thinking. But I
+could not make him do it all.
+
+The day I had spent upon the Wellenkuppe had been a time of imagination,
+and I had seen the beauty of things. But from the Matterhorn I can
+eliminate the element of beauty. I saw very little beauty in it or from
+it. I had other things to do than to think of the sublime. But I could
+think of the ridiculous, and at one o'clock in the morning, when we
+started from the hut with a lantern, I said the whole proceeding was
+folly. I was a fool to be there. And down below me, far below me,
+glimmered the crevassed slopes of the Furgg Glacier. I grew callous and
+absorbed, and I shrugged my shoulders as the dawn came up. I did not
+care to turn my eyes to look upon the red rose glory of the lighted Dom
+and Taschhorn. Let them glow!
+
+At the upper ice-filled hut we rested. The vastness of the mountain
+began to affect me. I saw by now that the Wellenkuppe was a little
+thing. The three thousand extra feet made all the difference. This was
+obviously beyond me, and I could never get to the summit. It was
+ridiculous of the Pollingers to think I could. I told them so quite
+crossly as we went on. Probably they had made a mistake; they would, no
+doubt, find it out on the Shoulder. It seemed rather hard that I should
+have to get there when it was so easy to turn back at once. But I said
+nothing more and climbed. My heart did its work well, and my head did
+not ache. This was a surprise to me, as I had looked for some sort of
+_malaise_ above twelve thousand feet. As it did not come I stared at the
+big world about me. I viewed it all with a kind of anger and alarmed
+surprise. Where was I being taken to? I began to see they were taking me
+out of the realm of the usual. I was rapidly ascending into the
+unknown, and I did not like it in the least. If we fell from the
+_arête_ we might not stop going for four thousand feet. Down below, a
+thin, blue line was a _bergschrund_ that was capable of swallowing an
+army corps. That patch of bluish patina was a tumbled mass of _séracs_.
+The sloping glacier looked flat.
+
+Then the guides said we were going slowly. I knew they meant that for
+me, of course, and I felt very angry with them. They consoled me by
+saying that we should soon be at the Shoulder, and that it would not
+take long to reach the summit. I did not believe them and I said I
+should never do it. But when we got to the Shoulder I was glad. I knew
+many turned back at that point. We sat down to rest. The guides talked
+their own German, not one word of which I could understand, so turned
+from them and looked at the vast upper wedge of the Matterhorn. It
+glowed red in the morning sun; it was red hot, vast, ponderous, and yet
+the lower mountain held it up as lightly as an ashen shaft holds up a
+bronze spear-head. It was so wonderfully shaped that it did not look
+big. But it did look diabolic. There was some infernal wizardry of
+cloud-making going on about that spear-head. The wind blew to us across
+the Zmutt Valley. Nevertheless, the wind above the Roof, as they call
+it, was blowing in every direction, and the live wisps of newborn cloud
+went in and out like the shuttles of a loom. I came to the conclusion
+that this was a particularly devilish, uncanny sort of show, and stared
+at it open-eyed. But I was comforted by the thought that the Pollingers
+were rapidly coming to the belief that this was not the sort of day to
+go any higher. I was quite angry when they declared we could do it
+easily. For I knew better, or my disturbed mind thought I did. This was
+the absolutely unknown to me, and their experience was nothing to my
+alarmed instincts. I was sure that my ancestors had lived on plains, and
+now I was dragging them into dangers that they knew nothing of.
+Nevertheless, I told the guides to go on. I spoke with a kind of eager
+interest and desperation. For, indeed, it was most appallingly
+interesting. We came to the slabs where the ropes made the Matterhorn so
+easy, as I had been told. I wished that some of those who believed this
+were with me.
+
+But with the fixed ropes to lay hold of I climbed fast. I relinquished
+such holds upon solidity with reluctance. That yonder was the top, said
+my men, but for fully half a minute I declined to go any further. For it
+was quite obvious to me that I should never get down again. But again I
+shrugged my shoulders and went on. I might just as well do the whole
+thing. And sensation followed sensation. My mind was like a slow plate
+taking one photograph on top of the other. It was like wax, something
+new stamped out the last minute's impression. I heard my guides telling
+me that we must get to the summit because the people in Zermatt would be
+looking through telescopes. I did not care how many people looked
+through telescopes. So far as I was concerned the moon-men might be
+doing the same. I was one of three balancing fools on a rope.
+
+And then we came to the heavy snow on the little five-fold curving
+_arête_ that is the summit. Within a stone's throw of the top I declared
+again that I was quite high enough to satisfy me, but with a little more
+persuasion I went across the last three-foot ridge of snow, reached the
+top and sat down.
+
+The folks at Zermatt were staring, no doubt, but I had nothing to do
+with them. Let them look if they wished to. For it was impossible to
+get to the top, and I was there. It was far more impossible to get down,
+and we were going to try. That was interesting. I had never been so
+interested before. For though I hoped we should succeed I did not think
+it likely. So I took in what I could, while I could, and stared at the
+visible anatomy of the Mischabel and the patina-stained floor of the
+white world with intense, yet aloof, interest. After a mere five
+minutes' rest we started on our ridiculous errand. But though I was as
+sure in my mind that we should not get down as I had been that we should
+not get up, there was an instant reversal of feeling. My instincts had
+been trying to prevent my ascending; they were eagerly bent on
+descending. I did not mind going down each difficult place, for I was
+going back into the known. Every step took me nearer the usual. I was
+going home to humanity. These mountains were cold company; they were
+indifferent. I was close up against cold original causes, which did not
+come to me mitigated and warmed by human contact or the breath of a
+city. I had had enough of them.
+
+There are gaps in my memory; strange lacunæ. I remember the Roof, the
+slabs, the big snow patch above the Shoulder. Much that comes between I
+know nothing of. But the snow-patch is burnt into my mind, for though it
+was but a hundred _mètres_ across it took us half-an-hour's slow care to
+get down it. Without the stakes set in it and the reserve rope it would
+have been almost impossible. It only gradually dawned on me that this
+care was needed to prevent the whole snow-field from coming away with
+us. I breathed again on rock. But the little _couloirs_ that we had
+crossed coming up were now dangerous. I threw a handful of snow into
+several, and the snow that lay there quietly whispered, moved, rustled,
+hissed like snakes, and went away. But I could hardly realise that there
+was danger here or there. There was, of course, danger to come, yonder,
+round the corner of some rock. But the guides were very careful and a
+little anxious. It dawned on me, as I watched them with a set mind, that
+this was rather a bad day for the Matterhorn.
+
+The distances now seemed appalling. After hours of work I looked round
+and saw the wedge stand up just over me. It made me irritable. When, in
+the name of Heaven, were we coming to the upper hut? When we did at
+last get there I began to feel that by happy chance we might really
+reach Zermatt again after all.
+
+Once more I had vowed a thousand times that I would never climb again.
+But I know I shall, though I hardly know why. It is not that the fatigue
+is so good for the body that can endure it. Nor is it the mere sight of
+the wonders of Nature. The very thing that is terrifying is the
+attraction, for the unknown calls us always.
+
+But if there is a great pleasure, and a terrible pleasure, in coming
+into (and out of) the unknown, it is intensified by the fact that one is
+learning what is in one's self. It is a curious fact that writers seem
+to have done a great deal of climbing. Many of the first explorers among
+the higher Alps may not unjustly be classed among men of letters, and
+some of them, no doubt, went on a double errand. They learnt something
+of the unknown in two ways.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS
+
+
+All Zurich turned out to see the procession that was a mile long and
+overlapped, and went past double, going opposite ways, and the skies
+were blue as amethyst, and the lake was like the heavens, while
+underfoot the white dust lay thick until the growing, hurrying crowd
+sent it flying. All trades, with banners and bands and emblems, were
+represented; there were iron workers, tin workers, gardeners, women and
+children. One beautiful young girl in a cap of liberty waved a red
+banner to Freedom among the applause of thousands. For there were eight
+thousand in the procession, and the spectators were the half of this
+busy Canton making Sunday holiday. At the end of the procession we
+rested in the Cantonal Schulplatz, and Grealig spoke, and then Volders,
+the violent, strong-voiced Belgian, who called for _la lutte_, and
+looked most capable of fighting. He is now dead.
+
+And on the morrow, at the opening of the many-tongued Congress, the
+fighting and confusion began and lasted a long, long time. For after
+some usual business and congratulations the usual fight about the
+Anarchists commenced. It all turned on the invitation, which was worded
+in a broad way, so broad as to catch the English Trades Unions, who fear
+Socialism as they do the devil, and thus let in Anarchists claiming to
+represent trades become corporate by union.
+
+The long hall, decorated by Saint Marx and many flags, quickly filled
+with an incongruous mass of four hundred delegates, and the gallery were
+soon yelling. Bebel, who kept in the background and pulled the strings,
+proposed a limiting amendment about "political action" which the
+Anarchists maintained includes revolutionary force. This was the signal
+for the fight. Landauer, a German, young, long, thin and enthusiastic,
+made a fine speech in defence of the Anarchists. Then Mowbray of the
+English backed him up. I was then in the gallery and saw the mass surge
+here and there. Adler of the Austrians strove for peace with
+outstretched arms among the crowd, dividing angry and bitter men. But
+he was overborne and blows were struck. The Anarchists were expelled.
+Only one man was seriously hurt, but those thrown out were bitter at
+their expulsion, and on the morrow the row began again.
+
+On the platform were the president and vice-president, and the
+interpreters and others. These interpreters are mostly violent partisans
+and don't conceal it. A speech they like they deliver with real energy,
+rasping in the points. They are not above private interpretations; they
+were as liberal as Sir Thomas Urquhart when he translated Rabelais not
+in the interests of decency. When they hated a speaker they mangled and
+compressed him. There was a great uproar when Gillies, a German, but one
+of the English deputation, insisted on translating his first speech into
+German. The interpreters and others vowed he would make another and
+different one, but he stuck to his point and raised the very devil among
+the Germans of the Parliamentary Socialist party who wanted to dispute
+the Anarchist delegates' credentials and have them definitely "chucked."
+They howled and roared and shook their fists, and the French president
+shrieked for order. But at times his bell was a faint tinkle, like a
+far sheep-bell on distant hills. He shouted unheard and looked in vain
+for a break. For the Germans were accused of meanness; it was simply a
+desire to keep out the younger, more open, most alive of the workers,
+those who admired not their methods and looked on them as they did on
+Eugene Richter.
+
+Then at last the English delegation, who as a body were in favour of
+turning the Anarchists out, rose and yelled for the closure, vowing they
+would leave until real business was reached if some decision wasn't come
+to; and that had some effect. The yells of "_Clôture, clôture!_"
+dominated all else, and it was finally voted among frantic disorder, the
+French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For
+on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning,
+for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians,
+and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans. So one delegate
+may equal a hundred; Servia and Bulgaria may outvote France; a solitary
+Russian hold ninety-two Germans in check.
+
+Before this they turned out a Polish girl with unsigned credentials. She
+made a good speech and was gallantly supported, but in the end failed.
+And when all the putting out was done there was an appeal for
+unanimity. No one laughed, however, and then Bebel came from behind with
+a proposal that seeing so much time had been wasted the articles of the
+agenda should be submitted to the various committees first. So this
+morning is a morning off and there is peace at anyrate among the mass of
+the delegates.
+
+In all this it is excessively easy to be unjust, to misjudge and to go
+wrong. The man who is ready with _à priori_ opinions about all forms and
+means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he
+be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent
+nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent
+an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their
+mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole"
+they stand in the benches and protest again in acute screams. It is
+under extraordinary difficulties that the movement is being carried
+forward. Marx, when he started this internationalism, can hardly have
+recognised the supreme difficulties that the differing tongues alone
+offer to united action. In many a large assembly there is frequent
+misconception, but here are three main languages, and many of the
+delegates understand neither English, German nor French.
+
+And under the broad top currents of jealousy are the secret unmeasured
+tendencies of enmity or rivalry of ancient jealousy. To explain one
+man's vote we must remember that So-and-so threw a glass of absinthe in
+his face ten years ago in a Paris restaurant; that another was kicked in
+Soho; that another got work over the head of a friend.
+
+So the thing goes on, but whether their outlook be wide or narrow,
+personal or impersonal, they work in their way and something is really
+done.
+
+But for deadly earnestness commend me to the party with the unfortunate
+name of Anarchists. The party headed by Landauer and Werner issued
+invitations in the Tonhallé to the delegates and others, to come to the
+Kasino Aussersehl, where they would protest against the non-reception of
+their mandates. I went there with an English delegate. We entered a long
+hall with a stage and scenery at the end. All the tables were full of a
+very quiet crowd drinking most harmless red wine. I sat near Landauer.
+He is a very nervous, keen, eager young fellow, with the thin,
+well-marked eyebrows in a curve which perhaps show the revolutionary or
+at the least the man in revolt. But his general aspect and that of his
+immediate friends and colleagues is extremely gentle and mild; this no
+one can help marking.
+
+The proceedings began with a long speech by Werner and were continued by
+a Dutch journalist, who took the contrary side but was listened to with
+exemplary patience. He was controverted by Domela Niewenhuis, the leader
+of the Dutch, who looks a mediæval saint but speaks with great vigour
+and some humour.
+
+The most noticeable feature of this revolutionary meeting was its
+extreme peace and the great firmness with which every attempt at noise
+or interruption was put down. The only really violent speech made during
+the evening was by a fair Italian, who called the German Parliamentary
+Socialist "Borghesi" and recommended their immediate extinction by all
+means within the power of those who objected to their methods. Landauer,
+their revolutionary leader, spoke after him, and though greatly excited
+was not particularly violent. I talked with him the morning after and
+endeavoured to explain to him why the English workers were more
+conservative and more ready to trust to constitutional methods of
+enforcing their views. For it is the triple combination of long hours,
+low wages and militarism that makes the German violent and impatient of
+the slow order of change recommended by the Parliamentarians, who, so
+far, have done nothing.
+
+
+
+
+AT LAS PALMAS
+
+
+On a map the Canary Islands look like seven irregular fish scales, and
+of these Grand Canary is a cycloid scale. For it is round and has deep
+folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle.
+Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder
+heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem
+to run to the centre. With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one
+could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first
+blush it seems when one lands at Las Palmas that one has come to the
+cinder and sand dumping ground of all the world, an enlarged edition of
+Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail.
+There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by
+daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery
+satellite of Grand Canary joined to the main island by an isthmus of
+yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust; dust flies in a ceaseless wind;
+unhappy palms by the roads are grey with dust; it would at first seem
+impossible to eat anything but an egg without getting one's teeth full
+of grit. And yet after all one sees that there are compensations in the
+sun. I said to a man who managed a big hotel, "This is a hideous place;"
+and he answered cheerfully, "Yes, isn't it?" And he added, "We have only
+got the climate." So might a man say, "I've not much ready money, but
+I've a million or two in Consols." I understood it by-and-by. And after
+all Las Palmas is not all the island, nor is its evil-mannered port. The
+country is a country of vines behind the sand and cinder ramparts of the
+city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the
+hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they
+bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet
+above the sea. They grow vines and sugar and cultivate the cochineal
+insect, which looks like a loathsome disease (as indeed it is) upon the
+swarth cactus or tunera which it feeds on. And the islands grow tobacco.
+Las Palmas is after all only the emporium of Grand Canary and a coaling
+station for steamers to South Africa and the West Coast and South
+America. It also takes invalids and turns out good work even among
+consumptives, for there is power in its sun and dry air.
+
+Its people are Spanish, but Spanish with a difference. The ancient
+Guanches, now utterly extinct as a people, have left traces of their
+blood and influence and character. Even now the poor Canary folk
+naturally live in caves. They dig a hole in a rock, or enlarge a hollow,
+and hang a sack before the hole, and, behold, they possess a house. Not
+fifty yards from the big old fort at the back of the town the cliffs are
+all full of people as a sandstone quarry is sometimes full of sand
+martins. The caves with doors pay taxes, it is said, but those with no
+more than a sack escape anything in the shape of a direct tax. To escape
+taxes altogether in any country under Spain is impossible. The _octroi_
+or _fielato_ sees to that.
+
+For the most part Las Palmas to English people is no more than a
+sanatorium. They come to the Islands to get well and go away knowing as
+much of the people as they knew before. And indeed the climate is one
+that makes sitting in a big cane chair much easier than walking even a
+hundred yards. But the English for that matter do not trouble greatly
+about the customs or conditions of any foreigners. They _are_
+foreigners, Spaniards, strangers. It is easy to sit in the garden of a
+big hotel surrounded by one's own compatriots and ignore the fact that
+the Canary Islands do not belong to us. That they do not is perhaps a
+grievance of a sort. One is pleased to remember that Nelson made a bold
+attempt to take the city of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, even though he was
+wounded and failed. For no more surprising piece of audacity ever
+entered an English head. There was no more disgrace in his failing than
+there would be in failing to take the moon. And after all, some day, no
+doubt, the English will buy or steal a Canary Island. There is a
+lingering suspicion among us all that no island ought to belong to any
+other nation, unless indeed it is the United States. With an
+enterprising people these cinder heaps would be less heavily taxed and
+more prosperous. For the prosperity of Las Palmas itself is much a
+matter of coaling. And the islands have had commercial crisis after
+commercial crisis as wine rose in price and fell, as cochineal had its
+vain struggle with chemical dyes. Now its chief hold is the banana.
+
+My first walk at Las Palmas was through the port to the Isleta. I went
+with a Scotchman who talked Spanish like a native and astounded two
+small boys who volunteered to guide us where no guide was needed. The
+begging, as in all Spanish places, is a pest, a nuisance, a very
+desolation. "Give a penny, give a penny," varied by a tremendous rise to
+"Give a shilling," is the cry of all the children. Among Spaniards it is
+no disgrace to beg. While in the cathedral one day two of us were
+surrounded by a gang of acolytes in their church dress who begged
+ceaselessly, unreproved by any priest. These two boys on the Isleta
+having met someone who spoke Spanish left us to our own devices after
+having received a penny. And we went on until we were stayed by
+sentries. For the Isleta is now a powerful fort. It was made so at the
+time of the Spanish-American War, and no strangers are allowed to see
+it. So we turned aside and walked miles by a barbed wire fence, among
+fired rocks and cinders, where never a blade of grass grew. The Isleta
+is the latest volcano in Grand Canary, and except in certain states of
+the atmosphere it is utterly and barrenly hideous. Only when one sees it
+from afar, when the sun is setting and the white sea is aflame, does it
+become beautiful. Certainly Las Palmas is not lovely.
+
+And yet there is one beauty at Las Palmas, a beauty that none of the
+natives can appreciate and few of the visitors ever see. It is a kind of
+beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful.
+There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a
+sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so
+keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the
+reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with
+sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes
+in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand,
+it owes its prosperity to it as well. Yet folks curse its great folded
+dunes, which by blocking the channel between the main island and the
+Isleta have created the sheltered Puerto de la Luz, where all its
+shipping lies in security from the great seas breaking in Confital Bay.
+These dunes rise two hundred feet at least, and for ever creep and shift
+and move in the draught of keen air blowing north and north-west. In the
+sunlight (and it is on them the sunlight seems most to fall) they shine
+sleekly and appear to have a certain pleasant and silky texture from
+afar. But as we walk towards them the light gets stronger, almost
+intolerably strong, and when one is among them they deceive the eye so
+that distances seem doubled. And they lie and move in the wind. Day
+after day I watched them, and walked upon them, and on no two days were
+they alike; their contours changed perpetually, changed beneath one's
+eyes like yellow drifting snow. They advanced in walls, and the leeward
+scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the
+sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the
+surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of
+the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in
+faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for
+clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk.
+Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from
+its bottom nothing was visible but the skyline and the sky. Again we saw
+over the blazing yellow ridge sudden white roofs of the Puerto and the
+masts of ships, and then a streak of blue more intense than ever because
+of the red yellow of the sand. And all the time the dunes moved, lived
+and marched south-east, while the sands rose up out of the sea of the
+windy bay and marched overland. The sand itself was very dry, very fine,
+so fine indeed that when it trickled through the fingers it felt like
+fine warm silk. No particle adhered to another. As I raked it through my
+fingers the sand ran in strange, enticing curves, each pouring stream
+finely lined, as if it was woven of curious fibres, making a wonderful
+design of interlacing columns. And deep beneath the surface it held the
+heat of yesterday.
+
+To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand
+pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet
+had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast;
+there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was
+alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an
+infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand
+came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again.
+The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life.
+Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a
+solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat
+in the folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to
+the world.
+
+And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was
+ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the
+curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were
+wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand
+spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a
+thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its
+own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand
+and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the
+left the hills above Banyodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy
+with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at
+their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the
+Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards
+Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam
+like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one's feet often lie Portuguese
+men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue,
+and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are.
+One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them
+carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching
+finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my
+tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of
+young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty,
+nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne
+with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may
+survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's
+dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may
+indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of
+desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay
+there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific
+overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty
+and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las
+Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.
+
+
+
+
+THE TERRACINA ROAD
+
+
+Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by
+express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of
+the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the
+Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses
+the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of
+Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the
+past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs
+from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and
+Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the
+strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long
+Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they
+warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens.
+And To-day marches two and two in the stalwart figures of twin
+_carabinieri_ upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some
+danger from brigands. These _carabinieri_ (there are never less than two
+together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law
+is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax
+salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient
+Appian Way, made by Appius Claudius three centuries before the Christian
+era, there are many poor, and poor of a sullen mind, differing much from
+the laughter-loving _lazzaroni_ of Naples. I saw many of them: they
+belonged still to a conquered Samnium. Or so it seemed to me.
+
+The train now runs from Rome to Velletri, and on to Terracina. The
+Sabine and Alban Mountains are upon the left soon after leaving the
+city. Further south are the Volscian Hills. Velletri is an old city of
+the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and
+the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all
+seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is
+visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the
+enchantress. One might imagine that her influence has not departed with
+her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes
+of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount
+Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands in the bay of Naples.
+Below, to the south-east, lies Terracina; on its high rock the arched
+ruins of the palace of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who conquered
+Odoacer and won Italy, ruling it with justice after he had slain Odoacer
+at Ravenna with his own hand.
+
+I got to Terracina late at night one January, and though I own that
+things past touch me with no such sense of sympathy as things yet to be,
+my heart beat a little faster as I drove in the darkness through this
+ancient Anxur, once a stronghold of the Volscians. Here too I left the
+railway and the southern road was before me. Terracina was touched with
+literary memories; Washington Irving had written about that very same
+old inn at Terracina to which I was going, that inn which poor deceived
+Baedeker called Grand Hotel Royal in small capitals. I was among the
+Volscians, in the Appian Way, in the country of brigands, with the
+spirit of Irving. And suddenly I drove across rough paving stones in the
+heavy shadows of vast corridors, and was greeted by a feeble and
+broken-down old landlord, who wished the noblest signor of them all, my
+undistinguished self, all good things. Poor Francia was the very spirit
+of a deserted landlord. I imagined that he might have remembered
+prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise
+robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His
+vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by
+candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and
+speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the
+best apartment in his house. We climbed stone staircases as one might
+climb the Pyramids, wandered on through resounding and ghostly
+corridors, and finally came to a room as vast as a quarry and almost as
+chilly as a catacomb. When he placed the candle on a cold slab of a
+table and withdrew with many bows I could have imagined myself a lost
+spirit. There was just sufficient light to see the darkness. The room
+was a kind of tragedy in itself; the floor was stone; a little bed in
+one far distant corner was only to be discovered by travel. It was a
+long walk to the window. Outside I saw white foam breaking in the
+harbour now silted up and wholly useless.
+
+I dined that night in another hall which could have accommodated a
+hundred. I was lost in shadows. But then I was a shadow among shades.
+This was the past indeed, an ancient world. And after dinner, at last, I
+got a bath. It took me two hours to get it, and when it came it was
+nothing more than a great kettle for boiling fish in. I knew it was that
+by the smell. I rejected it for a basin which was almost as large as an
+English saucer for a breakfast cup. And then I slept. I felt that I was
+in a tomb, sleeping with my fathers. It was a kind of unexpected
+resurrection to wake and find daylight about me.
+
+I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took
+a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and
+the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids.
+Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at
+all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me
+to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my
+prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to
+Formia, where I should be once more in touch with the rail. I
+instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I
+knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian
+experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with
+the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an
+awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went
+out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and
+hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are
+making a bargain or _combinazione_. The old landlord brisked up
+wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded
+him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that
+he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large
+commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a
+traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood
+some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble
+gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The
+landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of
+which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed. He suggested
+fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For
+an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to
+go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More
+than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They
+struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers.
+It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And
+finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then
+leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire
+and to give a _pourboire_. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old
+landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of
+pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his
+modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the
+Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.
+
+The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses--decent at anyrate
+for Italy--and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the
+railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange
+dream, such as might well come to one on a spot where ancient Rome, the
+age of the Goth, and mediæval Italy and modern times mingled. By the
+road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the
+ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the
+road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun
+shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine
+blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.
+
+Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded
+over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy,
+a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of
+brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great
+street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted
+not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to
+ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of
+the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the
+property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was
+attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object
+was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He
+failed but played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the
+town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.
+
+We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was
+glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses
+climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is
+cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept
+down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a
+flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them.
+It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediæval
+fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into
+substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and
+pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was
+brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French
+Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the
+Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano
+to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and
+Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his head. Finally he
+was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the
+wildest legends of his career.
+
+And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a
+wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his
+own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign
+languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember
+nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that
+I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the _dazio
+consume_, the _octroi_ post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's
+lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out
+before me.
+
+That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet
+sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as
+chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I
+wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a
+fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night,
+chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful
+little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills;
+on the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates;
+there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the
+Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the
+terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can
+see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola
+facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged
+to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little
+baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel
+dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck
+followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight
+or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would
+inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was
+surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor,
+so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who
+could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They
+were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the
+stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and
+to their disappointment, yet to their immense delight, for the Italian
+admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into
+laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with
+laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his
+lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly,
+"Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the
+hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of
+mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for
+once.
+
+
+
+
+A SNOW-GRIND
+
+
+Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has
+been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing
+is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as
+something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most
+mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been
+written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even
+surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier
+than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration
+has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as
+inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine
+author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for
+the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say
+that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it
+is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the
+snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes
+intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is
+perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be
+got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were
+wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would
+take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There
+are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the
+upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are
+deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he
+hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.
+
+And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I
+do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is
+not in man to endure such. He _will_ do everything that can be done by
+endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction
+that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb
+and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling
+that comes to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how
+far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always
+doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts
+Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself
+are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He
+only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might
+call impossible.
+
+But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to
+preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more
+than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do
+but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the
+plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will
+take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with
+them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.
+
+The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas
+Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as
+mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly
+be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as
+fast as any but the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an
+excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I
+was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not
+one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try
+one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay
+and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange
+that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a
+condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and
+wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was
+anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the
+edge of a precipice about matters of mountain æsthetics.
+
+We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which
+is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for
+Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close
+pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would
+be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after
+all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us
+say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a
+mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For
+early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the
+most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which
+does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly
+grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of
+them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are
+many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning
+after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But,
+nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one
+stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single
+candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I
+swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me
+that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than
+Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my
+own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a
+human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After
+drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage
+and found O---- sitting on the stairs putting his boots on. He too was
+silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off
+camp before dawn. When O---- had finished his breakfast we found the
+guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two
+o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough
+but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we
+got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view
+of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and
+equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the
+most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own
+folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.
+
+It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose
+opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted
+by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn
+had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides
+said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that
+two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their
+lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the
+great ice river of the Gorner Glacier we saw other and nearer and
+brighter lanterns going from the Bétemps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One
+party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew
+that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the
+vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We
+seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies
+crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon
+the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was
+beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all
+of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the
+Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call
+beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the
+Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty
+red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the
+scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and
+non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality
+to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems
+alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite
+alone. The human water lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea
+was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at
+night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of
+avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun
+is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents.
+And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is
+cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is
+swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another
+world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.
+
+Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track
+branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice,
+and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base
+of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides
+are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The
+two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by
+all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as
+strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and
+ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down
+by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged
+guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in
+knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di
+Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like.
+For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with
+putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I
+fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was
+not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task,
+the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers
+have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.
+
+Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses
+not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long
+snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore
+and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the
+mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters
+not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little
+real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it; the
+feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of
+anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be
+read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have
+their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the
+snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and
+peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our
+left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the
+real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the
+Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its
+name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be
+like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which
+was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte
+Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the
+ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux.
+And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was
+beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the
+vast plains of _névé_ with their glare and their infinite infernal
+monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles the shining white
+world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for
+human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very
+far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is
+little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as
+we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to
+rest, and I fought with my friend O---- about the beauty of the
+mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real
+loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting
+that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a
+thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.
+
+And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the
+snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the
+steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga.
+We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to
+the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I
+own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my
+soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat
+agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.
+
+And yet below us was the other side of our pass, which certainly looked
+more interesting. Right under our feet was a little snow _arête_ with
+slopes like a high pitched roof. It was quite possible to be killed
+there if one was foolish or reckless, and the prospect cheered me up. It
+is at anyrate not dull to be on an _arête_ with a snow slope leading to
+nothing beneath me. And I cannot help insisting on the fact that much
+mountaineering is essentially dull. Often enough a long day may be
+without more than one dramatic moment. There is really only five minutes
+of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the
+_arête_, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to
+the left and came to the _bergschrund_, the big crevasse which separates
+the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious
+that the guides should find the _schrund_ difficult. I had been bored to
+death and yearned for some little excitement. I even declared sulkily
+(it is odd, but true, that one does often become reckless and sulky
+under such circumstances) that I was ready to jump "any beastly
+_bergschrund_." My offer was no doubt made with the comfortable
+consciousness that the guides were not likely to let me do anything
+quite idiotic. But there was no necessity for any such gymnastics. The
+_schrund's_ lower lip was only six feet lower than the upper lip, and
+the whole crevasse was barely three feet across, though doubtless deep
+enough to swallow a thousand parties like ours. Somewhat to my
+disappointment we got over quite easily, and struck down across the
+glacier, passing one or two rather dangerous crevasses by crawling on
+our stomachs. The only satisfaction I had was that both the guides and
+O---- declared that the way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas
+it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told
+them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an
+accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in
+the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood
+on the steep _débris_ slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the
+zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake,
+and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had
+lunch, and I and O---- once more fought over the glacier of the upper
+snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on æsthetic or
+gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-Fée
+till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I
+get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel
+in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I
+declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the
+Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or
+to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does
+not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of
+labour.
+
+
+
+
+ACROSS THE BIDASSOA
+
+
+I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and
+the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east
+wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I
+discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick
+mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English
+Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped
+for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them,
+though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great
+city of sad inhabitants.
+
+The desolation of the Landes is an ordered, a commercial desolation.
+Once the whole surface of the district bore nothing but a scanty
+herbage. The soil is sand and an iron cement, or "hard-pan," below the
+sand. Here uncounted millions of slender sea-pines cover the plain; they
+stand in serried rows, as regular as a hop-garden, gloomy and without
+the sweet wildness of nature. And every pine is bitterly scarred, so
+that it may bleed its gum for traders. When the plantations are near
+their full growth they are cut down, stacked to season slowly, and the
+trees finish their existence as mine timbers deep under the earth.
+
+After seventy miles of a southward run there are signs that the Landes
+are not so everlasting and spacious as they seem. To the south-east, at
+Buglose, where St Vincent de Paul was born, the Pyrenees show far and
+faint and blue on the horizon. And then suddenly the River Adour
+appears, and a country which was English. Dax was ours for centuries,
+and so was Bayonne, whose modern citadel has had a rare fate for any
+place of strength. It has never been taken; not even Wellington and his
+Peninsular veterans set foot within its bastions.
+
+This is the country of the Basques, that strange, persistent race of
+which nothing is known. Their history is more covered by ancient clouds
+than that of the Celts; their tongue has no cousin in the world, though
+in structure it is like that of the North-American Indians. I met some
+of them later, but so far know no more than two words of their
+language.
+
+The wind was cool at St Jean de Luz, but the sun was bright and the sea
+thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and
+south are the Pyrenees--lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in
+outline. The dominant peak, being the first of the chain, is Larhune (a
+Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel
+held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and
+across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel,
+beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of
+Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of
+the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the
+dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the
+land. To the northward, but out of sight, lies windy Biarritz; to the
+south is blood-stained, battered and renewed San Sebastian, a name that
+recalls many deeds of heroism and many of shame. The horrors of its
+siege and taking might make one cold even in sunlight. But between us
+and its new city lies the Bidassoa. Here, at St Jean de Luz, is the
+Nivelle flowing past Ciboure. The river was once familiar to us in
+despatches. The whole country even yet smells of ancient war. For here
+lies the great western road to Spain. And more than once it has been the
+road to Paris. It is a path of rising and falling empire.
+
+During my few days at St Jean de Luz I had foregathered with some exiled
+friends, walked to quiet Ascain, and regretted I lacked the time even to
+attain the summit of so small a mountain as Larhune, and then, desiring
+for once to set foot in Spain, took train to Hendaye. This is the last
+town in France. Across the Bidassoa rose the quaint roofs and towers of
+old Fuentarabia, the Fontarabie of the French. I hired an eager Basque
+to row me across the river, then running seaward at the last of the ebb.
+
+The day was splendid and mild. There was no cloud in the sky, not a
+wreath of mist upon the mountains. The river was a blue that verged on
+green; its broad sand glowed golden in the sun; to seaward the
+amethystine waters of the Atlantic heaved and glittered. On the far
+cliffs they burst in lifting spray. The hills wore the fine faint blue
+of atmosphere; the wind was very quiet. This seemed at last like peace.
+I let my hands feel the cool waters of the river and soaked my soul in
+the waters of peace.
+
+And yet my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me
+with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he
+had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish
+and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how
+to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists in
+buying interested civility as well as help or transport with an extra
+fifty centimes is indeed but a wise and calculated waste. It occurred to
+me that he might solve a question that puzzled me. Were the Basques
+united as a race, or were their sympathies French or Spanish? After
+considering how I should put it, I said,--
+
+"Mon ami, est-ce que vous êtes plus Basque que Français, ou plus
+Français que Basque?"
+
+He taught me a lesson in simple psychology, for he stopped poling and
+stared at me for a long minute. Then he scratched his head and a light
+came into his eyes.
+
+"Mais, monsieur, je suis un Basque Français!"
+
+My fine distinction was beyond him, and it took me not a little
+indirect questioning to discover that he was certainly more French than
+Basque. He presently denounced the Spanish Basques in good round terms,
+and incidentally showed me that there must be a very considerable
+difference in their respective dialects. For he complained that the
+Spanish Basques spoke so fast that it was hard to understand them.
+
+He put me ashore at last on a mud flat and accompanied me to the Fonda
+Miramar, where a bright and pretty waitress hurried, after the fashion
+of Spaniards, to such an extent that she got me a simple lunch in no
+more than half an hour. My Spanish is far worse even than my French, but
+in spite of that we carried on an animated conversation in French and
+English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and
+Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I
+thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the
+deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque
+myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had
+never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was
+a sore point with me. I assured her of the shameful fact that the
+English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had
+some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England.
+As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to
+the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great
+excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now
+well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the news I
+had brought, I went out with my boatman to view the old town. I found it
+quaint and individual and lovely.
+
+A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and
+essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the
+upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the
+Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in
+England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the
+Bidassoa. I stood upon the roof of the old ruined palace of Charles Le
+Quint, and on every point of the compass the view had most peculiar and
+wonderful qualities. Beneath me was the increasing flood of the frontier
+river: at my very feet lay the narrow and picturesque street canyons of
+the ancient town; to the south was Irun in the shelter and shadow of the
+mountains; east-south-east rose the pyramidal summit of Larhune; the
+west was the sharp ridge of the brown Jaisquivel which hid San
+Sebastian; to the north was the rolling Bay; and right to the south the
+triple crown of Las Tres Coronas cut the sky sharply. Right opposite me
+Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I
+can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of
+mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot
+in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen.
+
+But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia. Peace lay over its
+dark homes and within its ancient walls.
+
+
+
+
+ON A VOLCANIC PEAK
+
+
+I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any
+volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de
+Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches
+of the Canary Islands.
+
+The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt,
+and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes
+of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge
+of the crater was of white fired rock; inside the cup the hollow was
+sulphur yellow. Puffs of smoke came from cracks. I dropped out of the
+wind and warmed myself at the fire. I picked up warm stones and danced
+them from one hand to another. And overhead a wind of ice howled. For
+the Peak is twelve thousand feet and more above the sea. An hour before
+I had been cutting steps in the last slopes of the last ash cone of the
+volcano which still lives and may burst into activity at any fatal
+moment.
+
+To stand upon the Peak and look down upon the world and the sea gives
+one a great notion of the making of things. Once the world was a
+crucible. The islands are all volcanic, all ash and cinders, lava and
+pumice. But I perceived that the Peak itself, the final peak, the last
+five thousand feet of it, was but the last result of a dying fire--a
+mere gas spurt to what had been. The whole anatomy of the island is laid
+bare; the history and the growth of the peak are written in letters of
+lava, in wastes of pumice and fire-scarred walls. The plain of the
+Canyadas lies beneath me, and is ten miles across. This was the ancient
+crater; it is as big as the crater of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands.
+But Kilauea is yet truly alive, a sea of lava with many cones spouting
+lava. Such was the crater of Teneriffe before the last peak rose within
+its basin. Now retama, a hardy bitter shrub, grows in these plains of
+pumice; the flats of it are pumice and rapilli, white and brown. But the
+ancient crater walls stand unbroken for miles, though here and there
+they have been swept away, some say by floods of water belched from the
+pit.
+
+From the last ash-peak of fire, as I stood on the crater walls in smoke
+and a cold wind, I saw no sign of Teneriffe's fertility. The works of
+man upon the lower slopes below the pinyon forests were invisible. The
+slopes by Orotava lay under cloud, the sea was hidden almost to its
+horizon by a vast plain of heaving mist. All I could see plainly was the
+old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls
+and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But
+though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay
+behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping,
+suffocating fish in drying mud. Its crater opened like a mouth and
+around it lesser holes gaped. On the plain of the old crater there rise
+two separate volcanoes--one, the true peak, rising 5000 feet from the
+Canyada floor (itself 7000 feet above the sea), and Chahorra, nearly
+4000. But so vast is the ancient crater that these two peaks, one yet
+alive and the other dead, seem but blisters or boils upon its barren
+plain. To the north, miles from the edge of my peak, I could see the
+crater cliff rise red. To the west and east the wall has broken down,
+but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet, scarred into
+chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the
+east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one
+follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies
+under these cliffs, looking like a beach. Once perhaps the crater was
+level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken
+down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood.
+
+None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were
+truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a
+last great eruption. Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for
+thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde.
+At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times,
+the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava
+into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it
+stands is the work of two periods of activity at least. The first great
+slope ends at another flat called the Rambleta. Here was once an ancient
+crater. Then the fires quietened, and there was a time of lesser
+activity. It woke again, and threw up the last weary ash-cone of a
+thousand feet or near it.
+
+All things die, but who shall say when a volcano has done its worst? A
+quiet Vesuvius slew its thousands: Etna its tens of thousands. Some day
+perhaps Teneriffe will wake again, either in earthquakes or lava-flow,
+and cause a Casamicciola or a Catania. The cones over against Garachico
+seemed much alive to me, and had I not warmed frozen hands at the very
+earth fires themselves? I broke out hot sulphur with the pick of my
+ice-axe. Icod of the Vines, or Orotava itself, port and villa, might
+some day wake to such a day as that which has smitten St Pierre in fiery
+Martinique.
+
+Once all the quiet seas were unbroken by their seven islands--Hierro,
+Palma, Gomera, Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote lay
+beneath the waters of the smiling ocean. Even now they smell of fire and
+the furnace; in the most fruitful vineyards of Grand Canary the soil is
+half cinders. In all the islands vast cinder heaps rise black and
+forbidding. Lava streams, in which the poisonous euphorbia alone can
+grow, thrust themselves like great dykes among fertile lands. The very
+sands of the sea are powdered pumice and black volcanic dust. One of the
+greatest craters of the world holds within itself great parts of wooded
+Palma. On dead volcanoes are the petty batteries of Spain over against
+Las Palmas. There is something strange and almost pathetic in the
+thought of guns raised where Nature once thundered dreadfully in the
+barren sunlit Isleta.
+
+But of all the islands and of all parts of them, the Peak, shining over
+clouds and visible from far seas, is the king and chief. I left its
+fiery summit with a certain reluctance. It attracted me strangely. It
+represented, feebly enough, I daresay, the greatest of all elemental
+forces. Yet its faint fires and its smoke and sulphur fumes had all the
+power of a mighty symbol. By such means, by such a formula, had the very
+world itself been made. Though snow lay upon its slopes and ice bound
+ancient blocks of lava together, it might at any hour awake again and
+renew the terrors which once must have floated over the seas in a gust
+of flame.
+
+
+
+
+SHEEP AND SHEEP-HERDING
+
+
+With the introduction of fences, which are now coming in with tremendous
+rapidity, sheep-herding as an art is inevitably doomed. When I knew
+north-west Texas a few years ago there was not a fence between the Rio
+Grande and the north of the Panhandle, but now barbed or plain wire is
+the rule, and in the pastures it is, of course, not so necessary to look
+after the sheep by day and night. In Australia I have not seen those
+under my charge for a week or more at a time. While there was water in
+the paddock I never even troubled to hunt them up in the hundred square
+miles of grey-green plain with its rare clumps of dwarf box. If dingoes
+were reported to be about I kept my eyes open, of course, but they were
+very rare in the Lachlan back blocks, and I was never able to earn the
+five shillings reward for the tail of this yellow marauder. But in Texas
+there are more wild animals--the coyote, the bear, the "panther" or
+puma--and it is impossible to leave the sheep entirely to their own
+devices, even in pastures which prevent them wandering. Nevertheless,
+looking after them on fenced land is very different from being with them
+daily and hourly, sleeping with them at night, following and directing
+them by day, being all the time wary lest some should be divided from
+the main flock by accident, or lest the whole body should spy another
+sheep-owner's band and rush tumultuously into it.
+
+But the new and unaccustomed shepherd on the prairie is apt to give
+himself much unnecessary trouble. It takes some time to learn that a
+flock of sheep is like a loosely-knit organism which will not separate
+or divide if it can help it. It might be compared with a low kind of
+jelly-fish, or even to a sea-anemone, for under favourable conditions of
+sun and sky it spreads out to feed, leaving between each of its members
+what is practically a constant distance. For when the weather changes
+they come closer together, and any alarm puts them into a compact mass.
+I have heard a gun fired unexpectedly, and then seen some 2000 sheep,
+spreading loosely over an irregular circle, about half a mile in
+diameter, rush for a common centre with an infallible instinct. And
+then they gradually spread out again like that same sea-anemone putting
+forth its filaments after being touched.
+
+The new shepherd, however, is in constant dread lest they should
+separate and divide so greatly that he will lose control of them. I have
+walked many useless miles endeavouring to keep a flock within unnatural
+limits before I discovered that they never went more than a certain
+distance from the centre. And this distance varied strictly with the
+numbers. At night time they begin to draw together, and if they are not
+put in a corral or fold will at last lie down in a fairly compact mass,
+remaining quiet, if undisturbed, until the approach of dawn. But if they
+have had a bad day for feeding they sometimes get up when the moon rises
+and begin to graze. Then the shepherd may wake up, and, finding he is
+alone, have to hunt for them. As they usually feed with their heads up
+wind it is not as a rule hard to discover them. If the moon is covered
+by a cloudy sky they will often camp down again.
+
+The hardest days for the shepherd are cold ones, when it blows strongly.
+For then the sheep travel at a great pace, and will not go quietly
+until the sun comes out of the grey sky of the chilly norther, which
+perhaps moderates towards noon. But in such weather they do not care to
+camp at noonday, and instead of spreading they will travel onward and
+onward. They doubtless feel uncomfortable and restless. After such a day
+they are uneasy at night, especially when there is a moon.
+
+It is my opinion, after experience of both conditions, that unherded
+sheep do much better than those which are closely looked after. In
+Australia our percentage of lambs was sometimes 104, and any squatter
+would think something wrong if his sheep on the plain yielded less than
+90 per cent. increase. But in Texas, where the mothers are watched and
+helped, the increase is seldom indeed 75 in the 100, much oftener it is
+60. I used to wonder whether the losses by wild animals would have
+equalled the loss of 25 per cent. increase which is, I believe, entirely
+due to the care taken of them. For herding is essentially a worrying
+process, even when practised by a man who understands sheep well. The
+mothers are never left alone, and must be driven to a corral at night.
+Consequently they often get separated from their lambs before they come
+to know them, and one of the most pitiful things seen by a shepherd is
+the poor distracted ewe refusing to recognise her own offspring even
+when it is shown to her. We used in such cases to put them together in a
+little pen during the night, hoping that she would "own" it by the
+morning. But very often she would not, and then the lamb usually died.
+If, indeed, it was one of a more sturdy constitution than most, it would
+refuse to die and became a kind of Ishmael in the flock. The milk which
+was necessary it took, or tried to take, from the ewe, who, for just a
+moment, might not know a stranger was trying to share the right of her
+own lamb. Such an orphan rarely grows up, and most of them die quickly,
+as they are knocked about and cruelly used by those who take no interest
+in the disinherited outcast of that selfish ovine society. And yet its
+real mother is in the flock, reconciled to her loss after a few days of
+suffering.
+
+In spite of my present very decided disinclination to have anything to
+do with sheep, they are, like every other animal, very interesting when
+closely studied. I spent some years in their society in New South Wales
+and know a little about them. Shortly before I left Ennis Creek ranch in
+North-west Texas a very curious incident occurred, which I could never
+quite satisfactorily explain, for I believe the most serious fright I
+have ever had in all my life was caused by these same inoffensive,
+innocent quadrupeds. It was not inflicted on me by a ram, which is
+occasionally bellicose, but by ewes with their lambs, and I distinctly
+remember being as surprised as if the sky had fallen or something
+utterly opposed to all causation had confronted me. I want to meet a
+man, even of approved courage, who would not be shocked into fair fright
+by having half-a-dozen ewes suddenly turn and charge him with the fury
+of a bullock's mad onset. Would he not gasp, be stricken dumb, and look
+wide-eyed at the customary nature about him, just as if they had broken
+into awful speech? I imagine he would, for I know that it shook my
+nerves for an hour afterwards, even though I had by that time recovered
+sufficient courage to experiment on them in order to see if the same
+result would again follow. I had about 500 ewes and lambs under my care.
+The day was warm, though the wind was blowing strongly, and when noon
+approached the flock travelled but slowly towards the place where I
+wished them to make their mid-day camp. To urge them on I took a large
+bandana handkerchief and flicked the nearest to me with it as I walked
+behind. As I did so the wind blew it strongly, and it suddenly occurred
+to me to make a sort of a flag of it in order to see if it would
+frighten them. I took hold of two corners and held it over my head, so
+that it might blow out to its full extent. Now, whether it was due to
+the glaring colour, or the strange attitude, or to the snapping of the
+outer edge of the handkerchief in the wind--and I think it was the
+last--I cannot say, but the hindmost ewes suddenly stopped, turned
+round, eyed me wildly, and then half-a-dozen made a desperate charge,
+struck me on the legs, threw me over, and fled precipitately as I fell.
+It was a reversal of experience too unexpected! I lay awhile and looked
+at things, expecting to see the sun blue at the least, and then I
+gathered myself together slowly. In all seriousness I was never so taken
+aback in all my life, and I was almost prepared for a ewe's biting me. I
+remembered the Australian story of the rich squatter catching a man
+killing one of his sheep. "What are you doing that for?" he inquired as
+a preliminary to requesting his company home until the police could be
+sent for. The questioned one looked up and answered coolly, though not,
+I imagine, without a twinkle in his eye, "Kill it! Why am I killing it?
+Look here, my friend, I'll kill any man's sheep as bites _me_." For my
+part, I don't think biting would have alarmed me more. After that I made
+experiments on the ewes, and always found that the flying bandana simply
+frightened them into utter desperation when nothing else would. It was a
+long time before they got used to it. I should like to know if any other
+sheep-herders ever had the same experience at home or abroad.
+
+In another book I spoke of lambs when they were very young taking my
+horse for their mother. This was in California; but in Texas I have
+often seen them run after a bullock or steer. One day on the prairie a
+lamb had been born during camping-time, and when it was about two hours
+old a small band of cattle came down to drink at the spring. Among these
+was a very big steer, with horns nearly a yard long, who came close to
+the mother, just then engaged in cleaning her offspring. She ran off,
+bleating for her lamb to follow. The little chap, however, came to the
+conclusion that the steer was calling it, and went tottering up to the
+huge animal, that towered above him like the side of a canyon, apparently
+much to the latter's embarrassment. The steer eyed it carefully, and
+lifted his legs out of the way as the lamb ran against them, even
+backing a little, as if as surprised as I had been when the ewes
+assaulted me. Then all of a sudden he shook his head as if laughing, put
+one horn under the lamb, threw it about six feet over his back, and
+calmly walked on. I took it for granted that the unwary lamb was dead,
+but on going up I found it only stunned, and, being as yet all gristle,
+it soon recovered sufficiently to acknowledge its real mother, who had
+witnessed its sudden elevation, stamping with fear and anxiety.
+
+Sheep-herding is supposed, by those who have never followed it, to be an
+easy, idle, lazy way of procuring a livelihood; but no man who knows as
+much of their ways as I do will think that. It is true that there are
+times when there is little or nothing to be done--when a man can sit
+under a tree quietly and think of all the world save his own particular
+charge; but for the most part, if he have a conscience, he will feel a
+burden of responsibility upon him which of itself, independently of the
+work he may have to do, will earn him his little monthly wage of twenty
+dollars and the rough ranch food of "hog and hominy." For there is no
+ceasing of labour for the Texas herder of the plains; Sunday and
+week-day alike the dawning sun should see him with his flock, and even
+at night he is still with them as they are "bedded out" in the open.
+Even if he can "corral" them in a rough sort of yard, some slinking
+coyote may come by and scare them into breaking bounds; and when they
+are not corralled the bright moon may entice them to feed quietly
+against the wind, until at last the herder wakes to find his charge has
+vanished and must be anxiously sought for. In Australia, as I have said,
+the sheep are left to their own devices for the greater part of the
+year, unless there should be unusual scarcity of water; but even there,
+to have charge of so many thousand animals, and so many miles of
+fencing, makes it no enviable task, while the labour, when it does come,
+is hard and unremitting. In New South Wales I have often been eighteen
+and twenty hours in the saddle, and have reached home at last so wearied
+out that I could scarcely dismount. One day I used up three horses and
+covered over ninety miles, more than fifty of it at a hard canter or
+gallop--and if that be not work I should like to know what is. This,
+too, goes on day after day during shearing, just when the days are
+growing hot and hotter still, the spare herbage browning, and the water
+becoming scanty and scantier. And for a recompense? There is none in
+working with sheep. They are quiet, peaceable, stupid, illogical,
+incapable of exciting affection, very capable of rousing wrath; far
+different from the terrible excitement of a bellowing herd of
+long-horned cattle as they break away in a stampede, among whom is
+danger and sudden death and the glory of motion and conquest; or with
+horses thundering over the plain in hundreds, like a riderless squadron
+shaking the ground with waving manes, long flowing tails, and flashing
+eyeballs, whom one can love and delight in, and shout to with a strange,
+vivid joy that sends the blood tingling to the heart and brain. Were I
+to go back to such a life I would choose the danger, and be discontented
+to maunder on behind the slow and harmless wool-bearers, cursing a
+little every now and again at their foolishness, and then plodding on
+once more, bunched up in an inert mass on a slow-going horse, who
+wearily stretches his neck almost to the ground as he dreams, perhaps,
+of the long, exhilarating gallops after his own kind that we once had
+together, being conscious, I daresay, of the contemptuous pity I feel
+for the slow foredoomed muttons that crawl before us on the long and
+weary plain.
+
+It is highly probable that the introduction of fences will have its
+effect in other ways than in increasing the number of lambs born and
+reared. Sheep-herding will almost disappear when the wild beasts of
+Texas are extinct, as they soon will be, for a fenced country is very
+unfit for such animals. But then the natural glory of the wide open
+prairie will be gone, and civilisation will gradually destroy all that
+was so delightful, even when my sheep, by worrying me, taught me what I
+have here set down.
+
+
+
+
+RAILROAD WARS
+
+
+Everybody nowadays has some notion of the way the railroad business of
+America is carried on. They know that there are too many roads for the
+traffic, and that, to prevent a general ruin, the managers combine, pay
+the profits into the hands of a receiver, and receive again from him a
+certain agreed proportion of the whole sum. But this method of "pooling"
+the profits is sometimes unsatisfactory. One line will think it gets too
+little if the fluctuations of trade send more freight over its rails
+than it formerly had, and will demand a greater proportion of the gross
+profits. This demand may be granted, but if not, the agreement may break
+down, and the discontented railroad go to work on the old principle of
+every man for himself. This very likely inaugurates a war of tariffs;
+fares and freights go down slowly or quickly according as the quarrel
+is open or secret, until one or other of the parties gives in to avoid
+complete ruin.
+
+While I was living in San Francisco, early in 1886, there was an open
+war between all the lines west of Chicago and Kansas City, including the
+Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande, the
+Southern Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé. Fares to New
+York and the Atlantic seaboard came tumbling down by $10 at a fall. The
+usual rate from New York to San Francisco is $72. It fell to 60, to 50,
+40, 30, to 25, to 22. All the railroad offices had great placards
+outside inviting everyone to go East at once, for they would never get
+such a chance again. Some of the notices were very odd. One began with
+"Blood, blood, blood!" and another had a hand holding a bowie knife,
+with the legend "Here we cut deep!" And, as I have said, they did cut
+deep, for at the end one might go to New York for about $18. Now this
+$18 went in a lump to the railroad east of Chicago. Consequently the
+passengers were carried over 2000 miles for nothing. Frequently during
+two days men were booked to Chicago or Kansas City from San Francisco
+or Los Angeles for $1. Two thousand miles for 4s. 2d!
+
+Such a state of things could not last, but while it did it gave rise to
+much speculation. Many men bought up tickets, good for some time,
+believing the bottom prices had been reached when the fall had by no
+means ended. It was odd to stand outside an office and listen to the
+crowd. Some would hold on and say, "I'll chance it till to-morrow." Then
+I have seen an agent come outside and say, "Gentlemen, now's your time
+to go east and visit your families. Don't delay. Of course fares may
+fall further, but I think not. Don't be too greedy. You are not likely
+to get the chance again of going home for twenty-five dollars." They did
+fall further, but recovered again on the rumour of negotiations
+beginning between the competing lines. When that was contradicted they
+fell again. Suddenly, without any warning, they jumped up to normal
+rates, and left many of the outside public--the bears, so to
+speak--lamenting that they had not taken the opportunity so eloquently
+pointed out by the oratorical agents on the sidewalk by the offices. For
+the placards and pictures came down at once, and to an inquirer who
+asked, "What can you do New York at?" the answer was, "Why, sir, the
+usual rate--$72."
+
+To an Englishman who has not travelled in the States and become familiar
+with the methods employed there by business men, it seems odd that
+anyone should chaffer with the clerk at a ticket-office. What would an
+English booking-clerk say if he were asked about the fare to some place,
+and, on replying £1, received the rejoinder, "I'll give you 15s?" He
+would think the man a joker of a very feeble description. Yet this may
+often be done in Western America. Even when there is no "war" the agents
+have a certain margin to veer and haul on in their commission, and will
+often knock off a little sooner than allow a rival line to get the
+passenger. Besides, it frequently happens that there may be a secret
+cutting of rates without an open war. My own experience, when I came
+down from Sonoma County in the autumn of 1886, meaning to return to
+England, will give a very good notion of this, and of the way to get a
+cheap ticket when there is the trouble among the companies which may end
+in a war, or be patched up by arbitration.
+
+It had been said in the papers for some time that rate-cutting was
+going on in San Francisco, and this made me hurry down not to lose the
+opportunity. The morning after my arrival I walked into an office in
+Kearney Street and said briefly, "What are you doing to New York?" The
+clerk said in a business way, "Seventy-two dollars." I laughed a little
+and looked at him straight without speaking. "Hum," said he; "well, you
+can go for sixty-five." "Thanks," I said, "it isn't enough." I walked
+out, and though he called me back I would not return. Then I went to Mr
+P., a well-known agent for railroads and steamships. To use a vulgarism,
+he did not open his mouth so wide as the other, but at once offered me a
+through ticket to Liverpool for $72. I thanked him and said I would call
+again. Deducting the $12 for a steerage passage, his railroad fare was
+$60. So far I had knocked off 12. And now it began to rain very hard. It
+did not cease all day. And my day's work was only begun, for it was only
+ten o'clock then. I went from one office to another, quoting one's rates
+here and another's there, and slowly I dropped the fare to fifty. I had
+to explain to some of these men that I was not a fool, and that I knew
+what I was doing; that if they took me for a "tenderfoot," or a
+"sucker," they were mistaken. My explanations always had an effect, and
+down the fare tumbled. At last, about three o'clock, I had got things to
+a very fine point, and was working two rival offices which stood side by
+side near the Palace Hotel. One man--Mr A., whom I knew by name, who
+indeed knew a friend of mine--offered me $45. I shook my head, and going
+next door, Mr V. made it a dollar less. It took me half-an-hour to
+reduce that again to forty-three; but at last Mr A., who was as much
+interested in this little game as if I were a big stake at poker, went
+suddenly down to $41. I offered to toss him whether it should be $40 or
+$42. He accepted, and I won the toss. As he made out the ticket, he
+remarked, almost sadly, "We don't make anything out of this." But he
+cheered up, and added, "Well, the others don't either." So I got my
+ticket; and it was over one of the best lines. By that day's work,
+though I got wet through, covered with mud, and very tired, I saved $32.
+
+When on board the east-bound train next day I got talking with some
+dozen men who were going east with me, and, naturally enough, we asked
+each other what fares we had paid, I found they varied greatly, but the
+average was about $60. One little Jew, a tobacconist, was very proud
+that his only cost $48. He almost wept when I told him that I beat him
+by eight whole dollars. Moreover, I reached New York twenty hours before
+him, for when we parted at Chicago we made arrangements to meet in New
+York, and then I found that he had been obliged to round into Canada,
+and lie over all one night, while I had come direct on the Chicago and
+Alton with only two hours' wait at Lima; so on the whole I did not think
+I did very badly.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS
+
+
+It may seem strange to people who are entirely unacquainted with the
+methods of shipmasters and officers generally in the American mercantile
+marine that a sailor should have such a deadly objection to sail in one
+of their vessels; but those who know the hideous brutalities which
+continually occur on such ships will quite understand the feelings of a
+man who finds himself on a vessel which would probably have been manned
+willingly if it had not a bad character among seamen. I have known an
+American vessel lie six weeks and more off Sandridge, Melbourne, waiting
+for a crew, which she could not get, although men were very plentiful
+and the boarding-houses full. There are some vessels running from New
+York, etc., round the Horn to San Francisco, which have a villainous
+reputation. The captain of one of these was sentenced to eighteen
+months in the Penitentiary when I was in the great Pacific Port for
+incredible atrocities practised on his crew. For one thing, he shot
+repeatedly at men who were up aloft, and hit one of them who was on the
+main-yard, though not so seriously as to make him quit his hold of the
+jack-stay. One of the ship's boys was treated with barbarity during the
+whole passage; thrashed, beaten, starved, and ill-used in the vilest
+manner; and at last the captain knocked him down and jumped on his face
+so as to blind him for life. This man went a little too far, and the
+courts, which are always biassed, and very much biassed considering
+their origin, on the side of rich authority, were compelled to do their
+duty by the uproar that this last incident caused. Yet even after that
+the people connected with the shipping interests got up petitions, and
+intrigued and wire-pulled for months to get the Governor of California
+to pardon him. Failing in this, they approached the President; but I am
+heartily glad their efforts were vain.
+
+One of my own shipmates in the _Coloma_, of Portland, Oregon, was once
+with a commander of this class, and so bad was his reputation that no
+one among the crew knew until they were under way who the captain was.
+My mate said, "I was at the wheel when I saw him come up the companion,
+and, as I had sailed with him before, my blood ran cold when I
+recognised him. He came straight up to the wheel, stared at me, and
+asked me, 'Haven't you sailed with me before?' 'Yes, sir,' I answered.
+Then he grinned, 'Ha, then you know me. When you go forward you tell the
+crowd what kind of a man I am, and tell them that if they behave
+themselves I'll be a father to 'em.' I knew what his being a father to
+us meant. However, I didn't see any good in scaring the fellows, so when
+my trick was over I told them the skipper was a real beauty. Just then
+there was a roar from the poop, 'Relieve the wheel'; and the man who had
+relieved me came staggering forrard with his face smothered in blood. He
+had let her run off a quarter of a point or so, and the skipper, without
+saying a word, struck him right between the eyes with the end of his
+brass telescope, cutting his nose and forehead in great gashes. That was
+his way of being a father to us, and he kept it up all the passage. The
+first chance I got I skinned out!"
+
+It is true that the American mercantile marine is not so bad as it was.
+These things do not occur in all vessels, but even yet they occur so
+frequently that an English sailor would, as a general rule, rather sail
+with the devil himself than an American skipper. What the state of
+affairs was some twenty or thirty years ago one can hardly imagine, but
+it certainly was much worse then. Shanghai-ing is not so much practised.
+There is a story current among seamen, though I know not how true it is,
+that it was checked owing to the lieutenant of an English man-of-war
+being drugged and carried on board an American merchant-man. However,
+there is now, or was but lately, a boarding-house keeper in San
+Francisco whose Christian or first name had been abolished in favour of
+"Shanghai." I had the very doubtful honour of knowing him, and could
+easily believe any stories told of his chicanery and treachery to
+sailormen.
+
+
+
+
+TRAMPS
+
+
+The poor tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he
+often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is
+often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy--and
+something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct
+classes of tramps--those who take the road to look for work, and those
+(the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that
+they may never find it. In this preponderance of the lazy traveller over
+the industrious lies the distinction between the state of affairs in
+America and Australia, for in the latter country the "sundowner," or
+"murrumbidgee whaler," or "hobo" proper, is in the minority.
+
+When I was on the tramp myself in Oregon I was much annoyed by being
+taken for one of the truly idle kind. I remember at Roseberg, or a
+little to the north of it, I once stopped and had a talk with a farmer
+whom I had asked for work. Although he had none to give me he was very
+civil, and we talked of tramps and tramping. He looked at me keenly. "I
+can see you are not of the regular professionals," said he. "Thank you
+for your perspicacity," I answered, and though perspicacity fairly
+floored him, he saw it was not an insult, and went on talking. "Now look
+here, my boy, they say we're hard on tramps, and perhaps some of us are,
+but I reckon we sometimes get enough to make us rough. Last summer I was
+in my orchard, picking cherries, I think, and a likely-looking, strong
+young fellow comes along the road. Seeing me, he climbs the fence, and
+says to me, 'Say, boss, could you give me something to eat? I haven't
+had anything to-day.' I looked at him. 'Why, yes,' said I. 'If you'll go
+up to the house I'll be up there in a few minutes when I've filled this
+pail; and while you're waiting just split a little wood. The axe is on
+the wood pile.' Now, look you, what d'ye think he said. 'I don't split
+wood. I ain't going to do any work till I get to Washington Territory.'
+'Oh!' said I, 'that's it, is it? Then look here, young fellow, don't you
+eat anything till you get there either; for I won't give you anything,
+and just let me see you climb that fence in a hurry.' So he went off
+cursing. Ain't that kind of thing enough to make us rough on
+tramps?--let alone that they steal the chickens; and if you look as you
+go down the road you'll see feathers by every place they camp." That was
+true enough, and south of the Umpqua I used to find goose feathers every
+few hundred yards. On that same tramp down through Oregon I once met
+four men travelling north. There had been a murder committed by a tramp
+in the south of Roseberg, and we stopped under an old scrubby oak to
+talk it over. Three of them were working men, but the fourth was a true
+professional, about fifty years of age, whose clothes were ragged to the
+last extremity of tatters. His hands were brown at the backs, but I
+noticed, when I gave him some tobacco, which he very promptly asked for,
+that the palms were perfectly soft. He told us how long he had
+travelled, and how many years it was since he had done any work; and,
+finally rising, he picked up a wretched-looking blanket, and said,
+"Well, good-day, gentlemen. I'm off to call on the Mayor of Portland and
+a few rich friends of mine up there." He winked good-humouredly and
+shambled off.
+
+I met a lame young fellow near Jacksonville, who told me he had come all
+the way from New York State, and was thinking of going back. He was in
+very good spirits, and did not appear in the least dismayed at the
+prospect of tramping 2000 miles, for he was one of those who do not use
+the railroad and "beat their way." When I was at work in Sonoma County,
+California, a little fellow came and worked for ten days, who once
+travelled 200 miles inside the cowcatcher of an engine. Most English
+people know the wedge-shaped pilot in front of the American engine well
+enough by repute to recognise it. When the engine was in the yard over
+the hollow track he crawled in, taking a board to sit on inside. When
+the locomotive once ran out on the ordinary track it was impossible to
+remove him, although the fireman soon discovered his presence there, and
+poured some warm water over him. On coming to a little town about fifty
+miles from his destination the constable came down to the train. "He
+came," said Hub (that was our tramp's name) "to see that no tramps get
+off there, or, if they did, to advise them to clear out. He walked to
+the engine and said 'Good day' to the driver. 'Got any tramps on board
+to-day, Jack?' he said. 'We've got one,' he answered; 'but we can't get
+him off.' 'Why? how's that?' said the constable. 'Go and look at the
+pilot.' So he came round and looked at me, and he burst into a laugh.
+'All right, Jack,' says he, 'you can keep him. He won't trouble us, I
+can see.' And with that he poked me with his stick, and called everyone
+to take a look. I said nothing, but you bet I felt mean to be cooped up
+there, not able to move, with all the folks laughing at me."
+
+But, in spite of Hub's sad experience, he went off on the tramp again as
+soon as he had enough to buy a pair of new boots with.
+
+Tramps--that is, the bad ones among them--are very often insolent when
+they find no one but women in the house. Once a man I knew was working
+in Indiana, but having a bad headache he remained in one morning.
+By-and-by a truculent-looking tramp came along. "Kin you give us suthin'
+to eat, ma'am?" he growled. "Certainly," said the woman, who was always
+kind to travellers. She set about making him a meal and put out some
+bread and meat. The tramp, who certainly did not look hungry, eyed it
+with disfavour. "Bah!" said he at last, with intense contempt; "I don't
+want that stuff. D'ye think I'm starving? A'nt you got suthing
+nice--say, some strawberry shortcake and cream?" The woman stared with
+astonishment, as well she might. But the man with the headache heard Mr
+Tramp's remarks. There was a shot-gun hanging in the room where he was;
+so, slipping off the bed, he reached for the weapon, walked out quietly,
+and, thrusting the muzzle of the gun under the tramp's ear, he roared in
+a fierce voice "Get!" And, to use the vernacular, the tramp "got"
+instantly.
+
+The last story I will tell of tramps is perhaps the most audacious of
+all. I met the chief actor in British Columbia. It appears that he and
+another man went one Sunday to a very respectable farmhouse in Illinois
+to beg for food. They knocked and there was no answer. They knocked
+again, and still without avail. Then they opened the unlocked door and
+went in. The dining-table was laid ready for a feast, as it seemed, for
+it was adorned with an admirable cold collation, including a turkey,
+several fowls, and a number of pies. The eyes of my acquaintance and
+his partner sparkled. Here was a chance, for the family was at church.
+They went out, got a sack, and hastily tumbled into it the turkey, the
+fowls, some bread, and the most substantial pies. Just as it was getting
+full one looked out of the window and saw a man coming up the path. They
+were struck with terror of discovery, but on watching they soon saw that
+this was a tramp like themselves. He came up and knocked at the door.
+"Can you give me something to eat, sir?" he asked humbly. "I guess so,"
+said my acquaintance, coolly; "that is, if you ain't one of the tramps
+that won't work. Will you cut some wood for your dinner?" "Of course I
+will," said the tramp, gladly, and he went to the wood pile. While he
+was at work the two spoilers of the Egyptians departed through the back
+door, and went about a hundred yards to the corner of a wood, where they
+laughed till they cried. The result of their manoeuvre was sure to be
+too good to be lost, so one of them climbed up a tree and watched. In
+about a quarter of an hour he saw a string of men and women coming
+towards the house, and still the working tramp made the chips fly. On
+entering the yard one of the men went up to interview him, and by the
+tramp's gestures it was evident that he was explaining that he had been
+set to work. Meanwhile, the women went in, but came out again in a
+moment, shrieking with indignation. The next sight was the farmer armed
+with a stick belabouring the astonished worker, who fled across the
+fence incontinently. He was followed to the very verge of the wood, and
+then the exhausted "mossback" left him to return to the house. "It was
+just the funniest thing I ever saw," declared my unabashed friend; "and
+to see that poor fellow get whipped for our sins nearly killed me. But I
+tell you we rewarded him for his labour after all. We found him sitting
+on a stump rubbing himself all over, and invited him to dinner with us.
+So, you see, he got the grub we promised him, and he didn't work for
+nothing, for that would just kill a tramp."
+
+
+
+
+TEXAS ANIMALS
+
+
+The fauna of Texas is very varied, and a naturalist may find plenty
+there for his note-book, and much to reflect on, if he be a
+contemplative man. A hunter may satisfy himself, too, if he goes into
+the extreme west and north-west, but he must be quick about it, for I
+received a letter years ago from a friend of mine in the south part of
+the Panhandle of Texas, in which he told me that all the land was
+getting fenced in, even in those parts that I knew in 1884 as wide and
+open prairie, and when fences come the beasts go, deer and antelope
+retreat, and "panther" or cougar are hunted and shot by those who own
+sheep, cattle and horses. I am no naturalist, and no great hunter. At
+the risk of causing a smile of contempt I must confess that I can hold a
+shot-gun, a "double-pronged scatter-gun," or a rifle in my hands without
+shooting at anything I see. I have let antelope and deer pass me without
+even letting the gun off, and have spared squirrels and birds
+innumerable that most of my friends would have promptly slain; but I
+take great interest in animal life, and am fond of watching the denizens
+of prairie or forest.
+
+When on my friend Jones's ranche in 1884 I sometimes went wild turkey
+hunting or potting; we used to choose a moonlight night and lie under
+the trees, where they roosted, and shoot them on the branches. It was
+mere butchery, and the sole excitement consisted in the doubt as to
+whether any of the big birds would come or not, and the chief interest
+to me was the conversation of my wild Texan friends, who were stranger
+than turkeys to me.
+
+There were not many birds of prey around us, except the big slow-sailing
+turkey-buzzards, which are protected by law as useful scavengers.
+Nevertheless, I shot at one once, and having missed it I never tried
+again.
+
+My great friends were the hares or jackrabbits, which are fast, but very
+easy to shoot, for if I saw one coming my way, loping or cantering
+along, I stood stock-still, and he would come past me without taking the
+least notice of my presence, probably imagining I was only a
+curious-shaped stump. Sometimes I found them in the dry arroyos or
+water-courses, and threw stones at them. They rarely ran away at once
+at full speed, but for the most part went a little distance and sat up
+to look at me, waiting for two or three stones, until they made up their
+minds that I was decidedly dangerous.
+
+Another little animal was the cotton-tail rabbit, so called from the
+white patch of fur under the tail, which is as bright as cotton bursting
+from the pod, I killed one once more by impulse than anything else. It
+ran from under my feet when I had a knife in my hand. I threw it at the
+rabbit, and to my surprise knocked it over, for I am a very bad shot
+with that sort of missile.
+
+The prairie dogs or marmots were in tens of thousands round us, and I
+used to amuse myself by shooting at one in particular with the rifle.
+His hole was a hundred yards from our camp, and he would come out and
+sit on his hill every now and again, and then go nibbling round at the
+grass. I shot at him a dozen times, and once cut the ground under his
+belly, but never killed him. They are extremely hard to get even if
+shot, for they manage to run into their burrows somehow, even if
+mortally wounded. The Texans believe they go back even when quite dead;
+but then they are rather credulous, for some of them believe that the
+rattlesnake lives on friendly terms with the inmates of the burrows. The
+rattlesnakes were very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first
+one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I
+smashed it into pieces, while I trembled like a horse who has nearly
+stepped on a venomous snake. Those Texans who do not believe in the
+friendship of snake and prairie dog say that it is possible to make the
+rattler come out of a hole he has taken refuge in by rolling small
+pieces of dirt and earth down it. For they assert that the prairie dogs
+earth up the mouth of the burrow when they know a snake is in it, and
+the reptile knows what is about to happen.
+
+Of other snakes there were the moccasins, water snakes, and esteemed
+very deadly. It is said that when an Indian is bitten by one of these he
+lies down to die without making any effort to save his life, whereas if
+a rattlesnake has harmed him he usually cures himself. Besides these
+there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver
+coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous
+size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles
+from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom
+I knew. One night he heard a noise, and looking out of his bunk saw by
+the dim light of the fire an enormous snake crawling out of a hole in
+the corner of the room. He jumped out of bed and ran outside, and found
+a stick. He killed it, and it measured nearly eleven feet. It is called
+bull snake because it is popularly supposed to bellow, but I never heard
+it make any noise of such description.
+
+On these prairies there are occasionally to be found cougars, commonly
+called panthers or "painters," although erroneously. In British Columbia
+they are called mountain lions, and the same name is applied to them in
+California, unless they are called California lions. I am informed by a
+naturalist friend that they are the same species as the South American
+puma. I knew a man in Colorado City who was a great hunter of these
+animals, and he had half a dozen hunting dogs torn and scratched all
+over their bodies, with ears missing, and one with half a tongue, who
+had suffered from the teeth and claws of these cougars. He kept one in a
+cage which was much too small for it, and I was often tempted to poison
+it to put an end to its misery. This man had a regular menagerie at the
+back of his house, consisting of various birds, this cougar, and two
+bears.
+
+These bears are not infrequently to be met with on the prairies, and
+while I was staying in a town one was brought in in a wagon. Bruin had
+been captured by four cowboys, who had lassoed and tied it. He weighed
+about 600 lbs., and was a black bear, for the cinnamon and grizzly do
+not, I believe, range in open level country.
+
+Besides these harmful animals there were plenty of antelopes to be
+found, if one went to look for them, and the cowardly slinking coyote
+was often to be seen as one rode across the prairie; and often in
+walking I found tortoises with bright red eyes. These were small, about
+six inches long. In the creeks were plenty of mud turtles, which are
+fond of scrambling on to logs to sun themselves. If disturbed they drop
+into the water instantly, giving rise to a saying to express quickness,
+"like a mud turtle off a log."
+
+I have said nothing of bison. Perhaps there are none now, but in 1884
+there were supposed to be still a few on the Llano Estacado or Stakes
+Plain. I knew one man who used to go hunting them every year and usually
+killed a few. But the last time I saw him he was on a "jamboree," or
+spree, and killed his unfortunate horse by tying it up without feeding
+it or giving it water while he was drinking or drunk, and so he did not
+make his usual trip. But I imagine there can be few or none left now,
+and probably the only representatives of the race are in the National
+Park.
+
+
+
+
+IN A SAILORS' HOME
+
+
+After coming back to England from Australia in the barque _Essex_ I
+found "home" a curious place, which afforded very few prospects of a
+satisfactory job. For if there is one thing more than another borne in
+upon anyone who returns from the Colonies it is the apparent
+impossibility of earning one's living in London. Every avenue is as much
+choked as the entrance to the pit at a popular theatre on a first night.
+And though it is said that we may always get a tooth-brush into a
+portmanteau however full it is, there comes a time when not even a
+tooth-brush bristle can be put there. I looked at London, wandered round
+it, spent all my money, and determined to go to sea again, this time in
+a steamer rather than in a "wind-jammer." With this notion in my mind I
+went down to Hull, whither a shipmate of mine had preceded me. He had
+been a quarter-master in the _Essex_ and was the melancholy possessor
+of a cancelled master's certificate. He owed this to drink, of course,
+as most men do who pile their ships up on the first reef that comes
+handy. But when he was sober he was a good old fellow. He took me round
+to the Sailors' Home in Salthouse Lane, and introduced me to the man who
+ran it. I stayed there six weeks.
+
+The Sailors' Home as an institution is not over-popular with seamen,
+especially with the more improvident of them. And the improvident are
+certainly ninety per cent. of the total sea-going race of man. As a rule
+Homes cease to be such when a man's money is done. He is thrown out into
+the street or into some equivalent of the notorious Straw House. There
+is always much talk at sea about the relative advantages of
+Boarding-Houses and Homes, and half the arguments about the subject end
+in more or less of a "rough house" and a few odd black eyes. However
+rude and brutal the boarding-house master may be, however much of a
+daylight robber he is (and they mostly are "daylight robbers") it is to
+his advantage to make his house popular. There is no surer way of doing
+this than ensuring his boarder a ship at the end of his short spree on
+shore. In many Homes the men look after this themselves. Jack is a
+child and wants to be looked after. As far as the Home in Salthouse Lane
+went, I think it combined some of the better qualities of both the
+common resorts of men ashore. The boss of it knew something about
+seamen; he was certainly not a robber, and he kept me and several others
+when we did not possess a red cent among us to jingle on a tombstone. He
+also kept order, for he had had some experience as a prize-fighter, and
+could put the best of us on the floor at a moment's notice. Once or
+twice he did so, and peace reigned in Warsaw.
+
+There were certainly very few of us in the Home. Hull was not quite as
+full of sailors as hell is of devils, as a boarding-house master once
+assured me that San Francisco was when I tried to get taken into his
+house after being rejected even less politely by that eminent scoundrel
+Shanghai Brown. Besides myself there were a sturdy blue-nose or
+Nova-Scotian; a long-limbed, slab-sided herring-back or native of New
+Brunswick, a big thick-headed ass of an Englishman and a smart thief of
+a Cockney, known to us all as Ginger. We lived together without
+quarrelling more than three times a day. This we thought was peace. It
+was certainly more peaceful than my last boarding-house at
+Williamstown, where we had a little bloodshed every night. But there the
+very tables and benches were clamped to the floor; the windows were too
+high above us for anyone to be thrown out, and on a board nailed beyond
+our reach was the legend, "Order must and _will_ be preserved." But that
+boarding-house was very exciting; my last excitement In it was tripping
+up a man, treading on his wrist and taking away a razor with which he
+meant to cut throats. In Hull we never went further than a good common
+"scrap," though they happened fairly often.
+
+Times were not very brisk in Hull just then. At anyrate, we did not find
+them so. We had a "runner" at the Home, who was supposed to help us find
+a ship, but certainly did not. He was a very curious person to look at.
+He weighed eighteen stone and was a perfect giant of strength, with legs
+like columns and a neck about twenty inches round. I never found out
+what his nationality was. He looked like a Russian, but denied that he
+was one. It was said that he once fought six men in the lane and downed
+them all in sheer desperation. As a matter of fact, he was rather
+cowardly, I think, and easily put on, though if he had really got mad
+something would have had to give. We did not rely on him but looked for
+ships ourselves in a very casual way. Most of us pretended to look for
+them and loafed about the neighbouring slums. When sailormen are thrown
+on their own resources they are pretty helpless creatures. The man who
+is a lion on a topsail yard in a gale is too often like a wet cat in a
+backyard when he is ashore. I was lazy enough myself, but as it happened
+it was I who got something to do for Ginger, for the New Brunswicker and
+myself.
+
+I had not been living in the highly-desirable neighbourhood of Salthouse
+Lane for a week before I found myself without a stiver. The rest were in
+the same condition. Every three days or so I borrowed a penny from the
+boss and got a shave in order to keep up my spirits. Three days' beard
+is almost as depressing as three days' starvation, and the little shop
+at the corner, which renewed my self-respect for a penny, seemed to me a
+most admirable institution. As for drinks, we had none--we were sober
+sailors indeed. The sun might get over the fore-yard and go down over
+the cro'-jack but we never touched liquor. Nevertheless we had fights to
+relieve the monotony of the situation. The Nova Scotian and I took to
+being hostile. We disbelieved each other's lies. So one day while we
+were in the smoking-room he said something which was not at all polite.
+I could not knock him down with a chair because the careful and
+provident boss had had them chained to the floor. So I hit him, and hit
+him rather hard, for what he had said out of pure devilry. He was
+sitting on the table and I knocked him off. His particular mate was the
+very thick-headed Englishman. He did his best for the Nova Scotian by
+holding me very tight while the blue-nose hammered me. This was awkward,
+to say nothing about the unfairness of it. I got away but presently
+found myself across a bench with my back in danger of being broken. More
+by good luck than management I broke loose and got the blue-nose across
+the bench, I am thankful to say I nearly broke his back. Then we waltzed
+round the room in the wildest way, till the wife of the boss and the
+servant girl flew in and broke up the party with the most amazing
+energy. I was the youngest and the most civilised, and the women
+naturally said it was the Nova Scotian's fault. They said so in the most
+voluble manner, and the Nova Scotian did not like it. He said they took
+my part because I was not so ugly as he was, and said it wasn't fair,
+especially as I had spoilt what little beauty he had. He further
+asserted that he would knock the stuffing out of me, and we were on
+hostile terms for twenty-four hours. Two days later he got a job as
+bo'sun in a barque and his mate shipped with him, and peace was assured
+for a time.
+
+The food they gave us was rough but fairly good and plentiful. Wherever
+the meat came from it could be masticated with some effort. In Barclay's
+boarding-house, in Williamstown, we had to take a spell in the middle of
+a mouthful. I have seen steak there that would have pauled a
+chaff-cutter. In the dining-room at Salthouse Lane there lived the
+wildest, most eccentric clock I ever saw in all my travels. It had a
+most remarkable way of striking quite peculiar to itself. We used to
+dine at one o'clock. At noon the clock usually struck one. In very
+extravagant days it struck two. But no one could guess what it would
+strike when it was really one o'clock. I once counted seventy-two
+strokes, and on a public holiday it went up to a hundred and twenty. It
+was our only amusement.
+
+We were allowed to come in at almost any time. When the Nova Scotian and
+his mate had departed the Cockney and the herring-back and I used to
+run together and go waltzing round the back part of Hull pretty well all
+night. Once we sat on the steps of a bank for nearly four hours, between
+twelve and four. With us were two young ladies, who were possibly not
+very respectable but about whom I knew nothing as I had never seen them
+before and never saw them again, and another young sailor who was good
+at yarns. I didn't know his name. Absurd as it may seem we were all
+quite happy. The policeman on the beat saw that we were, and evidently
+hated to disturb us. He came past us three times, and each time asked us
+very nicely to go home. Next time he repeated his request, and as he
+said he would look on our doing so in the light of a personal favour to
+himself, we agreed to evacuate the bank at last.
+
+Our greatest privation at the Salthouse Lane establishment was want of
+tobacco. We rarely had any of it. I remember one day, when want of
+nicotine made me very sad, we went, on my suggestion, into the bag-room
+and pulled out our bags and chests. My chest was what seamen call a
+round-bottomed chest, _i.e._, a sailor's canvas bag. The beauty of it is
+that anything wanted is always at the bottom. In turning the bag out I
+found half a plug of tobacco. If we had been gold-mining and I had
+struck a "pocket," or come across big nuggets we could not have been
+happier. We sat in the smoking-room, and having divided the plug we had
+a grand debauch. Of course we sometimes begged a pipe or two from
+luckier men about the docks, but to find a real half plug was something
+to gloat over.
+
+When I had been in the Home nearly two months, and owed what seemed an
+amazing amount of money, I really began to think that if I could not
+ship in a steamer I must go in a wind-jammer again after all. So I
+really began to hunt round in earnest, and after trying all sorts and
+conditions of craft I landed on a job in the _Corona_ of Dundee. She was
+a biggish composite vessel of about seventeen hundred tons register,
+with that horrible thing, wire running rigging. In her I made the
+acquaintance of one of her old crew, who had stayed by her in Hull
+river, who told me various yarns of her behaviour at sea, and how one
+man had been killed in her on her homeward passage from San Francisco.
+As we got to be pals he suggested I should bring some more men if I knew
+of any in want of a job. I brought along Ginger and the herring-back,
+and we went to work cleaning out the limbers. It was not a nice job, for
+the limbers of a ship which has been carrying wheat are, to say the
+least of it, rather malodorous. We scraped the rotting black muck out
+with boards and scrapers, and sent it up on deck. It was a two and a
+half days' job. Then the mate set me over my two friends to "break out"
+casks of beef and pork from the fore-peak. As I hadn't been much to sea
+it rather amused me to find myself bossing two men who had been at it
+all their lives. But I have to own that they were two of the stupidest
+men I ever met, though they were not bad fellows. Then the time came for
+us to go to London by the "run." They offered us 30s. for the run to
+London river. This, with the five shillings a day I had earned by six
+days' work on board, made £3. I had practically spent nothing while I
+was working in her, although we left the Home too early in the morning
+to have breakfast there. We used to go to a coffee-stall near the dock
+entrance and get what is described by Cockneys as "two doorsteps and a
+cup of thick" for about 2d. We went home for dinner and supper. Thus I
+had nearly all my £3 for the boss of the Home. He got the money when we
+were out in the "stream" with the tug ahead of us.
+
+We were only one night at sea. We washed her down and cleaned her a bit
+generally and made her look a little decent, and I had the look-out that
+night. As we towed the whole distance we came up London river next
+afternoon. It was a gloomy and miserable day, which made London horrible
+to behold. It was like entering hell itself to come up into the parts
+where the big warehouses stand and where the docks are. We came at last
+to Limehouse, where she was to be dry-docked. I was at the wheel then,
+and it took us two hours before we got her in and had her settled down
+upon the blocks with the shores to hold her. Then I took my
+round-bottomed chest and left her. The mate, who had taken a fancy to
+me, asked me to ship in her for her next voyage, but I said I meant to
+"swallow the anchor" and have no more of that kind of work. My
+experience in Hull--the semi-starvation, the fighting, the loneliness
+and general blackguardism of the whole show--had somewhat sickened me of
+the life. And yet seamen are good fellows, and might be much better if
+it were not for the greed of owners, who feed them badly, house them
+vilely, and think of nothing in the world but dividends. Seamen know
+what they know, and they resent with bitterness the way they are
+treated. They have a bitter saying, "That's good enough for hogs, dogs
+and sailors." The day must come when England will cry to her children of
+the sea, and weep because they are not.
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORY OF THE MORNING
+
+
+According to his temperament a man's memory of travel and the strange
+wild places of the earth deals chiefly with one set of reminiscences or
+with another. For me the remembered mornings of the wide and lonely
+world, whether in the bush, or on the prairie, or the veldt, or at sea,
+are my chiefest delight. For in them, as in the morning even now, is
+something especial and peculiar which recalls and recreates youth: which
+breaks up the dead customs of to-day, and sends one back again to the
+swift, sweet hours of experiment and change. Assuredly the nights had
+their charm, whether they were spent by some great camp-fire on the
+winding Lachlan, in the darkness of a pine forest in British Columbia,
+or on the fo'c'sle-head of a ship upon the sea; and yet the night was
+the night, the prelude to sleep, and not to activity, the chief joy of
+man.
+
+I can recall how a morning broke for me once which was the morning of a
+kind of freedom almost appalling to the child of cities. This was the
+morning of youth, or rather of earliest manhood, when I was timid and
+yet unafraid, curious, and, after a manner, innocent, when I had slept
+by my first camp-fire, on the Bull Plains of Australia's Riverina. And
+yet I can remember nothing of those hours clearly. Rather is there in my
+mind as typical of the Australian dawn such hours as those I spent away
+beyond the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, on a station on the
+banks of the Willandra Billabong. It was early summer and shearing time
+for a hundred thousand sheep, whose fleeces were destined for Lyons and
+the North of England. I had dropped off a wearied horse close upon
+midnight, and yet by half-past three I was up once more. I stumbled
+sleepily in the starry darkness to the mare that was kept up, one
+Beeswing by name, a mare so swift and keen for a little while that to
+ride her was a delight. She whinnied and muzzled me all over as I put
+the saddle on her and drew the girths tight. Then I swung across her,
+and for some minutes she went gingerly, for she was unsound and wanted
+warming for the hot task before her. Yet it was her only work in the
+long day and she delighted in it even as I did. We picked our way across
+the shadows of big salt-bush and the rounded humps of cotton-bush, then
+brown and leafless, to the paddock, a mile square, where the other
+horses were at pasture, and as I rode sleep dropped away from me and my
+eyes opened and my lips grew moist as I sucked in the air of dawn. In
+the east the pale ghost of the day's forerunner stood waiting. The wind
+in that hot season came from the north; it had no intoxicating quality
+save that of comparative coolness after the furnace of yesterday. Yet
+how sweet it was, when I remembered the burning noon, the hot labours of
+the stock-yard and its dust as the ten thousand of that day's driving
+entered reluctantly. And in the darkness the plain stretched before me
+without a break for a thousand miles save for the Barrier Ranges. With
+no map on the whole station I knew not even of them, and as far as eye
+could reach not a rolling sand-dune marred the calm oceanic level of
+that brown sea of land.
+
+And now upon this morning, that yet was night, I was adrift upon a horse
+with a definite task in the great circle of immensity. The rest of the
+world was nothing, and I rode delicately over the rotten grey ground
+till the starshine dwindled and the day came up like a slow diver
+through dark waters. The pallid air was odorous as I rode with rolled-up
+sleeves and open breast, and I sang a little, for the night was out of
+me and my throat was sweet. And Beeswing warmed, and under me grew
+nimble, with the swing and easy spring of the dancer, and she reached
+out to feel the bit lightly with an unspoiled mouth and to feel my
+hands, and she raised her lean head and sniffed the air for her own kind
+that we were after. Were we not horse-hunting? She bent her neck and
+went as delicately as ever Agag went, and then bounded lightly over a
+hole in the rotten ground of the great horse-paddock. She and I were
+partners in the morning as the dawn came up. And now, indeed, the
+morning tide broke over the eastern bar, and was like a pale grey flood
+moving over level earth. Then she whinnied low as though she spoke to me
+in a whisper, and I saw one dark, moving shadow, and another, as she
+broke into a gallop. Oh, but out of seven alarmed shadows, fearful of
+work, I needed three, and neither Beeswing nor her rider could endure in
+their pride to drive in seven when a special chosen three were enough.
+The dawn's game began, and though it was yet dawn's dusk we went at a
+gallop. For Beeswing and I together were the swiftest two, or the
+swiftest one, on that great station by the Willandra. But though the
+night was not gone there was enough light to see which horses I needed
+and which horses I had to discard, and to note how they broke apart
+cunningly. For two went this way, and one that; and four split into
+units as I swung round the outside edge of them in a wide circle. The
+rottenness of the ground gave chances, and made it hazardous. But
+Beeswing knew her work and the paddock, and now she was warm and as keen
+as fire, and any touch of lameness went away from her. She stretched out
+her fine lean head, and her eyes were quick; her open nostrils almost
+smelt and swept the ground as her head swung to and fro. Beneath me she
+was live steel, tense and wonderful as she sprang to this side and that
+of danger, and yet galloped. Again and again she swerved, and then, as a
+ten-foot hole showed before her, she leapt it in her stride. And again,
+another and another, for here the ground was crumbling, patchy, sunken,
+with little rims of hard earth in between cup-like openings. And as we
+went, and the day came, I swung my long stock-whip and shouted when it
+cracked. I was on them, into them, and they broke back, being
+over-pressed. But Beeswing was a bred stock-horse, she knew the game and
+loved it. Back she swung right upon her haunches, and was away upon the
+hunt after a great raking mare called Mischief. We galloped almost side
+by side, and then Mischief quailed and turned coward. As Beeswing swung
+again I brought the whip down on my quarry's quarters.
+
+And now the joy of the game of dawn was great, for selection came in and
+the skill of the game. To-day I wanted Mischief and Black Jack and the
+grey mare. So as I galloped, still with swinging and reverberating whip,
+I edged up and put my knees into Beeswing. As she answered and sprang
+forward, with a rush I was within whip length of Mischief and Tom, with
+Mischief on the outside. One flick of the lash and the mare outpaced
+Tom, leaving him last of the seven. Had I edged up outside of him
+Beeswing might have doubted whether I wanted him or not, but I sent her
+up on his near side, and when I flicked him he plunged back and out and
+she let him go. There were six to deal with, though he came after us
+whinnying; yet not being urged he presently stayed, and then I shot
+forward again and cut off two that I did not want, and now among the
+four there was but one I wished to leave behind. They were well aware
+that one or more of them was not to work to-day, for I still hung upon
+them with some eager discrimination. They knew the final shout of
+victory as well as I who sent it up. But Lachlan, the horse I wished to
+leave, was the fastest of the four and kept ahead. So I ran them hard
+for a quarter of a mile and then edged out a little, and slowed down
+till they slowed and left a space betwixt the three and Lachlan. I
+suddenly spoke to Beeswing and shook her up till she came swiftly
+abreast of my three galloping like horses in a Roman chariot. Then
+left-handed I cut Lachlan in the flank, and with a swift turn Beeswing
+swept between him and the others. They stayed and turned while disparted
+Lachlan ran wildly. And now my three, being turned, ran back for the
+others; and Beeswing followed them like fire and came up with them, and
+once more turned them and sent them for home. To keep them going while
+the others whinnied meant urging; it meant filling their minds,
+occupying their attention. So once more, with a great shout, I was upon
+them and swung the whip, letting it fall with a crack first on this side
+and then on that, and now in the growing daylight the dust rose up as we
+galloped. And presently I saw the little "tin" house where the
+out-station boss lived, and the tent I shared with my chum the
+"rouseabout." And as we went fast and faster (for it was morning and I
+was young) the sun thrust up a shoulder behind me and it was day in
+Australia, day in the Lachlan back-blocks. And I could see Long Clump, a
+patch of dwarf-box, over my shoulder as I turned loosely in the saddle
+to note whether the other horses still followed. I laughed at the day
+(for it was dawn), and yet I knew as I ran my three into the yard that
+ere the day was done I should have ridden sixty miles, and have mustered
+20,000 sheep in Long Clump Paddock. And when I stayed outside the
+stock-yard and put up the slip panels and patted Beeswing on the neck
+the one great pleasure of the day was over. The rest was not to be
+accomplished in the dusk of dawn and under the morning star, but had to
+be wrought out in flying dust, amid the plague of flies and the fierce
+heat of an Austral noon, whose heat increased with the slow sun's
+decline. But that swift sweet hour of the morning had been my very own.
+The remainder of the day belonged to the world, to duty, to the man who
+paid me a pound a week and "tucker" for my hands and arms and as much
+brains as work with sheep demanded. Yet through these hours sometimes
+the glory of the morning remained.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are mornings on land and mornings on the sea, and when the world
+is a grey wash and a mask of spindrift it is good to be alive upon the
+sea, high on a topsail-yard, to see the grey return of the glory of the
+day. The work is often sheer murder, but it is the work of men, and
+though the skin cracks and the nails bleed, as the bulging, slatting,
+frantic canvas surges like a cast-iron wave, the thin red-shirted line
+along the jack-stay does heroic work without meaning it, without one
+touch of consciousness, without praise, and mostly without even that
+reward of a "tot" of grog so sweet to the simple-minded sailorman. Ah,
+yes, to be sure we were heroes, and I too (though now soft and
+self-conscious) played an Homeric part upon the yard, was bold, and
+afraid, and "funked" it with any god-smitten, panic-driven half-god by
+Scamander's banks, or the windy walls of Troy. Now I know what it was,
+and can see the grey wash of ocean, and the grey wash of white-faced
+morning with the great seas driving against the rising day, even as the
+rollers of the Atlantic surge against the base of a high berg. Little
+good men at home, fat men, rotund, easy souls, or those who are neither
+good, nor fat, nor easy, may stare and imagine yet not come near the
+reality when the wind booms and the sea rises, and the great concave of
+night sky flattens and presses down upon the driven ship, and men
+strive to escape doom and yet care not, and work till they are blind,
+and then drop down into the scant shelter of the deck, where the icy
+wind seems warm after the strife and bellowing up aloft. Heroes? To be
+sure we were heroes. What is being shot at a mile off, or a hundred
+yards off, to being shot at by the very heavens while one hangs over the
+gaping trenches of the sea? There is not an old shellback alive who has
+clung between angry heaven and the grey-green pastures of the deep but
+deserves a Victoria Cross for unconscious, dutiful, grumbling, growling
+valour. He might justly call every scanty dollar he earns a medal. For
+he has often fought in the Pacific, or by the Horn, or off the windy
+Cape. To recall the thick tempest at midnight, when the wind harps
+thunder on the stretched rigging, is to be a man again. If I blow their
+trumpet, the trumpet of the old sea-dogs, these scallawags, these
+Vikings, what matter if I seem to blow my own, having been their
+companion one campaign or two upon the deep? That "Me" is dead, I know,
+and can only be resurgent in memory, and will never laugh or feel afraid
+again when the slatting canvas jars one's very teeth. Yet to remember
+(as I can remember) how one wild night on the Southern Pacific grew into
+morning gives me back youth and morning again when I cared nothing for
+death, since death was as far off, as impossible, ay, as absurd, as Fame
+itself.
+
+It had blown hard all day, and an hour after midnight our scanty band,
+some ten of us (mostly Cockneys like myself), stood upon the foot-ropes
+of the lower fore-topsail. There should have been twenty, but to be
+undermanned has been English fashion since Agincourt. Growl we ever so
+loudly where could more be found? The work was to be done by ten, one
+more even was not to be asked for. If the task seemed possible, why, it
+was possible, and when we scrambled to that narrow line of battle in the
+dark it seemed as easy as most things at sea, where the difficult is
+done hourly. Risks are nothing there; to risk nothing would be to risk
+destruction and to incur the bitter reproach of having shipped "not to
+go aloft." Each man to his fellow on the yard was a shadow and a pale
+blot of a face; each voice was a windy whisper, a bellow blown down into
+silence. As the ship ran, and lifted, and pitched and trembled, her
+narrow wedge shape was a blot beneath us: on each side of her white foam
+marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in
+its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out
+upon my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand,
+and being the youngest waited for the word to "leech" it or "skin" it
+up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow
+fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside
+me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others I saw and heard
+not. The word came along the yard from the bunt to "leech" it up, and we
+leant over and caught the leech and pulled it on the yard. Now the fight
+began, but the beginning of it was easy sparring, and though the wind
+blew heavy, and each minute we had to remember death when she checked
+her roll with a jerk, the weather leech came up easy and we chuckled,
+each being glad. And in half an hour, or an hour, we were half masters
+of the wind, or as much of it as gave the sail life, after many small
+defeats. And then (whose fault of fingers for not being steel hooks, who
+shall say?) the wind, having got reinforcements, tore the victory from
+us and away went the sail once more free and thundering in the dark. The
+word was passed again, the indomitable word by the indomitable bo'sun at
+the bunt, this time to "skin" it up, and each man clawed out again at
+the flat booming canvas, clawed at it with his crooked fingers as
+wrestlers claw for hold behind each others' backs. A wrinkle gave hold,
+we nipped it, and then the ironic devil in the gale shrieked with
+laughter and snatched even so small an advantage from us. We knew the
+"old man" and the mate were cursing us down below. Did they curse us, or
+the weather, or the owners, or our English Agincourt trick once more?
+What did it matter to us, beaten and unbeaten, as we rested for a moment
+and then again stretched out bleeding fingers for some little advantage,
+knowing well that when such a gale blew victory was only possible when
+by constant trials the chance came of each being given good or fair
+handhold at once. Then came a shriek of wind and a blown-out lull and a
+wrinkle lapsed into a fold. We shouted "Now!" left hold of the
+jack-stay, and with feet outstretched grabbed slack canvas and hung on
+as another squall came singing like shrapnel across the peaks of the
+leaping sea. "Hold on now, hold on!" so sang all of us, and we cursed
+each other furiously. "Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it's lost
+again!" We cursed ourselves, felt our muscles crack, our nails shred,
+our skin peel and stretch and sting, and yet (thanks to our noble
+selves) we only lost an inch. Once more--"Now, now up, you dogs!" and
+that's the long-lost, long-waited, sudden, surprising clock of dawn
+yonder. We have been two hours here, and once more the sail leaps up and
+comes down. Here, two hours, two compressed swift hours, two compacted
+eternities measured in gasps and half the work is done unless we weaken
+and let up and let go.
+
+But that's the dawn!
+
+Morning and the glory of it, the grey wash of Eternity; sea-grey and
+world-grey and sky-grey, all in one great wash with a little whiteness
+standing for daylight. Beyond the illimitable wash where the sea breaks
+against the sky is the sun; source of all, strength of all. And there is
+no sleep to wash out of our eyes before we catch up strength from it,
+and encouragement. Lately we might have raised the Ajax cry, "In the
+light, in the light, destroy us," but now we see the little sea-plant of
+grey-green grow in the east, and we are strong. There is light, or a
+blight, a greyness out ahead and the deck whitens all awash, and the
+"old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the
+rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of
+following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses,
+and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once
+and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout
+geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a
+little, dived, scooped up seas and shook them off. And yet the topsail
+was not conquered.
+
+And now and once again the squalls howled, and we held on, gaining
+nothing, yet losing nothing. We were blind but obstinate; to have gained
+something when everything might be lost beneath us gave us grip and
+courage. Ah, and then, then the great chance came, and as the last great
+fold of white canvas rose up like a breaking wave we shouted, flung
+ourselves upon it, and as our bellies (lean by now) held the rest,
+smothered it and beat its last life out. The thing had been alive; the
+gods too had blown, and we had been all but dissipated, but now we were
+conquerors, and the gaskets bound our dead prey to the yard. And the
+morning was up, a wild and evil-minded waste it flowered in; the music
+of the storm shrieked like the Valkyries scurrying through grey space.
+But what cared we, since now she would carry or drag what sail remained,
+creaseless, resonant, wide-arched and wonderful. The light leapt from
+crest to crest, and a little pale yellow blossom of blown dawn peeped
+out of the grey. Like a touch of fire it reanimated our washed and
+reeling world; we laughed as we dropped down after our three hours'
+battle with the demons of the air. It was morning; there was coffee and
+tobacco; our souls were satisfied and satiated with rewarding toil; if
+Fate was kind there would be neither making nor shortening of sail till
+the next day. We touched the deck and ran for'ard laughing. We saluted
+the cook, blinking at the door of his galley. "Good-morning, doctor!"
+and it _was_ "good-morning!" for we were mostly young.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lofty sloping plains of Texas and Kansas the air is often keen at
+night, even in the summer time. And what it is in winter let train hands
+on the Texas Pacific declare. But in the warmer season, when northers
+have ceased to blow, it has an intoxicating, thrilling quality only
+comparable to the breath of the higher South African veldt. It is good
+to be alive then, and the glory of the morning is an excellent and
+moving glory since it wakes one to swift activity and the very joy of
+being. For long months I had worked upon a ranch in the Southern
+Panhandle, and now felt healthy energies stirring within me. In Western
+America the very blood of life is unrest; to remain is difficult; the
+difficulties of motion are its joys, though hardship and privation be
+the migrant's life for ever. For me the ever-present prairie grew a
+little dull; for sheep were sheep always, and there were mountains afar
+off and strange, bright rivers and the dark, odorous forests of the
+north. Though my boss was of the order that remains and accumulates
+wealth he understood when I declared that I must go or die. On the third
+day hereafter he and an old confederate "Colonel" (discharged as "Full
+Private" doubtless) and I and a Mexican sheep-herder moved southward
+towards the railroad. We travelled on horseback and in a two-mule buggy,
+and with the movement discontent dropped away from me and all was well
+with the world, even though I knew not what weeks or even days should
+bring me. That night we camped thirty miles from the ranch and thirty
+from the little town we called a city, which had grown up in the
+sand-dunes by the banks of the Texan Colorado. We lighted our scanty
+fire at sundown. It was a typical camp of the later days upon the high
+prairie, and a not untypical set of men. Our talk was of horses and
+steers and sheep and of Virginia, whence our grizzled colonel came, and
+the Mexican sat and smoked and said nothing, save with his beady,
+brilliant eyes, as he made his yellow papers into flat _cigaritas_. And
+at nine o'clock silence and sleep fell upon us while the mules and
+horses champed their dry fare beside the buggy. For me the sleep of the
+just was my due, for I had worked hard that day. Yet I woke suddenly
+before the dawn, and woke all at once, refreshed and alive. It was still
+dark and yet I knew it was not properly night, for the time sense in me,
+measured healthily by refreshment, told me of the passage of time, and I
+arose from my blankets. As I walked out among the shadows softly my
+companions made no motion, and the horses whinnied coaxingly, as though
+I were still the guardian of their provender. The wind was cool, even
+cold, as it blew from the north, and on every side the vast prairie
+stretched like a mysterious dark green sea, with here and there a shadow
+heaving itself out of the infinite level. I walked lightly with a happy
+sense of detachment and well-being, almost with the feeling of a quiet
+resurrection.
+
+Elsewhere and in cities one awakes reluctantly; the trumpet of the Angel
+of the Day is heard with deaf ears; but here in the keen coolness, the
+vast greenness, the infinite interspace of prairie betwixt city and
+city, I was awake and keen and cool as dewy grass, and as peaceful as
+the stars even before the Day blew her horn upon the verge of a far
+horizon. This was summer, but it was not dawn yet; the year was young
+even in August because this was night; and I was part of the hour and
+the year. It was well with the world and well with me as I left the camp
+and marched snuffing the air like an antelope and with as keen a joy.
+And as I walked I was aware again that it was not night, for there was a
+Day-spring in the East, a pale glow like a whitish mirage, and star by
+star the night departed, till I stayed and looked back to the west and
+saw the silent waggon under which my sleeping comrade still lay
+unconscious of the hour. And slowly, very slowly the Glory of the
+Morning broke out of bondage and covered the glory of the night until
+the pallor of the new-born day was fine pale gold, and the gold was
+under-edged with rose, and the rose grew insistently and shot upward
+like a great corona upon the eclipsing earth. And as I stood, balancing
+lightly upon my light feet, bathed with dew, I moved my lips and greeted
+Day without conscious words, being even as my own ancestor, who perhaps
+had no words of greeting. And so upon that solitude the day was born
+like a new miracle with only one visible worshipper, and the sun rose up
+like a star and was then a convexed line of fire, and presently it ate a
+little into the prairie; and the world was light and rose and green and
+very near me, so that I sighed a little and then walked back briskly to
+the camp and raised a loud shout, not to the sun, but to my fellow-men.
+For the Glory had departed and there was the work of the day to be done.
+
+
+THE END
+
+_Colston & Coy. Limited, Printers, Edinburgh._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp's Notebook, by Morley Roberts
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp's Notebook, by Morley Roberts
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Tramp's Notebook
+
+Author: Morley Roberts
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2008 [EBook #25190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAMP'S NOTEBOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>A TRAMP'S NOTE-BOOK</h1>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MORLEY ROBERTS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p class="center">"RACHEL MARE," "BIANCA'S CAPRICE,"<br />"THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL."</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>LONDON</h3>
+
+<h2>F. V. WHITE &amp; CO. LTD.</h2>
+
+<h3>14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.</h3>
+
+<h4>1904</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#A_WATCH-NIGHT_SERVICE_IN_SAN_FRANCISCO"><span class="smcap">A Watch-night Service in San Francisco</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#SOME_PORTUGUESE_SKETCHES"><span class="smcap">Some Portuguese Sketches</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_PONDICHERRY_BOY"><span class="smcap">A Pondicherry Boy</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_GRADUATE_BEYOND_SEAS"><span class="smcap">A Graduate Beyond Seas</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#MY_FRIEND_EL_TORO"><span class="smcap">My Friend El Toro</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#BOOKS_IN_THE_GREAT_WEST"><span class="smcap">Books in the Great West</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_VISIT_TO_R_L_STEVENSON"><span class="smcap">A Visit to R. L. Stevenson</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_DAY_IN_CAPETOWN"><span class="smcap">In Capetown</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#VELDT_PLAIN_AND_PRAIRIE"><span class="smcap">Veldt, Plain and Prairie</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#NEAR_MAFEKING"><span class="smcap">Near Mafeking</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#BY_THE_FRASER_RIVER"><span class="smcap">By the Fraser River</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#OLD_AND_NEW_DAYS_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA"><span class="smcap">Old and New Days in British Columbia</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_TALK_WITH_KRUGER"><span class="smcap">A Talk with Kruger</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#TROUT_FISHING_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA_AND_CALIFORNIA"><span class="smcap">Trout Fishing in British Columbia and California</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#ROUND_THE_WORLD_IN_HASTE"><span class="smcap">Round the World in Haste</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#BLUE_JAYS_AND_ALMONDS"><span class="smcap">Blue Jays and Almonds</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#IN_CORSICA"><span class="smcap">In Corsica</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#ON_THE_MATTERHORN"><span class="smcap">On the Matterhorn</span></a></li>
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span><a href="#AN_INTERNATIONAL_SOCIALIST_CONGRESS"><span class="smcap">An International Socialist Congress</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#AT_LAS_PALMAS"><span class="smcap">At Las Palmas</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_TERRACINA_ROAD"><span class="smcap">The Terracina Road</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_SNOW-GRIND"><span class="smcap">A Snow-Grind</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#ACROSS_THE_BIDASSOA"><span class="smcap">Across the Bidassoa</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#ON_A_VOLCANIC_PEAK"><span class="smcap">On a Volcanic Peak</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#SHEEP_AND_SHEEP-HERDING"><span class="smcap">Sheep and Sheep Herding</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#RAILROAD_WARS"><span class="smcap">Railroad Wars</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#AMERICAN_SHIPMASTERS"><span class="smcap">American Shipmasters</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#TRAMPS"><span class="smcap">Tramps</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#TEXAS_ANIMALS"><span class="smcap">Texas Animals</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#IN_A_SAILORS_HOME"><span class="smcap">In a Sailors' Home</span></a></li>
+<li><a href="#THE_GLORY_OF_THE_MORNING"><span class="smcap">The Glory of the Morning</span></a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>A Tramp's Note-Book</h1>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_WATCH-NIGHT_SERVICE_IN_SAN_FRANCISCO" id="A_WATCH-NIGHT_SERVICE_IN_SAN_FRANCISCO"></a>A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO</h2>
+
+<p>How much bitter experience a man keeps to himself, let the experienced
+say, for they only know. For my own part I am conscious that it rarely
+occurs to me to mention some things which happened either in England or
+out of it, and that if I do, it is only to pass them over casually as
+mere facts that had no profound effect upon me. But the importance of
+any hardship cannot be estimated at once; it has either psychological or
+physiological sequel&aelig;, or both. The attack of malaria passes, but in
+long years after it returns anew and devouring the red blood, it breaks
+down a man's cheerfulness; a night in a miasmic forest may make him for
+ever a slave in a dismal swamp of pessimism. It is so with starvation,
+and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> things physical. It is so with things mental, with
+degradations, with desolation; the scars and more than scars remain:
+there is outward healing, it may be, but we often flinch at mere
+remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>But time is the vehicle of philosophy; as the years pass we learn that
+in all our misfortunes was something not without value. And what was of
+worth grows more precious as our harsher memories fade. Then we may bear
+to speak of the days in which we were more than outcasts; when we
+recognised ourselves as such, and in strange calm and with a broken
+spirit made no claim on Society. For this is to be an outcast indeed.</p>
+
+<p>I came to San Francisco in the winter of 1885 and remained in that city
+for some six months. What happened to me on broad lines I have written
+in the last chapter of <i>The Western Avernus</i>. But nowadays I know that
+in that chapter I have told nothing. It is a bare recital of events with
+no more than indications of deeper miseries, and some day it may chance
+to be rewritten in full. That I was of poor health was nothing, that I
+could obtain no employment was little, that I came to depend on help was
+more. But the mental side underlying was the worst, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> iron
+entered into my soul. I lost energy. I went dreaming. I was divorced
+from humanity.</p>
+
+<p>America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who
+would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan
+element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives
+rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures
+without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all
+other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the
+unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a
+lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which
+carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The
+rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms
+which precedes their welding, the beginning of socialism, is the father
+of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In
+what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent,
+hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there
+now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man
+for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the legend on
+the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it
+in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of
+the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds
+good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the
+American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his
+biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek
+in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only
+poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of
+the hardest, if not <i>the</i> hardest city in the world. Speaking from my
+own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand
+miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even
+excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is
+the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed
+different.</p>
+
+<p>I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one
+shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on
+boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+embittered me. On the third day I saw some of my equal outcasts
+inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading
+it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a
+street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At
+the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving
+who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving
+only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was
+bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.</p>
+
+<p>But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in
+melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one
+but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of
+sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service.
+I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I
+found the place half full of out-o'-works, and sat down by the door. The
+preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked
+like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and
+benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say
+he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking,
+and about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about
+him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.</p>
+
+<p>But I returned.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in
+everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false
+pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that
+insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me
+have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place
+on the earth.</p>
+
+<p>But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by
+way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me.
+Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected
+this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at
+a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for
+the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious
+types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a
+morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but
+my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a
+well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told
+stories well,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> and filled a church every night for ten days. During
+these days I heard him attentively, as I might have listened to any
+well-told lecture on any pseudo-science. But my intellect was
+unconvinced, my conscience untouched, and Scott gave me up. I attended a
+number of services by myself; I was lonely, poor, hopeless, living an
+inward life. The subjective became real at times, the objective faded. I
+had a little occasional work, and expected some money to reach me early
+in the year. But I had no energy, I divided my time between the Free
+Library and churches. And it drew on to Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>It was a miserable time of rain, and Christmas Day found me hopeless of
+a meal. But by chance I came across a man whom I had fed, and he
+returned my hospitality by dining me for fifteen cents at the "What
+Cheer House," a well-known poor restaurant in San Francisco. Then
+followed some days of more than semi-starvation, and I grew rather
+light-headed. The last day of the year dawned and I spent it foodless,
+friendless, solitary. But after a long evening's aimless wandering about
+the city I came back to California Street, and at ten o'clock went to
+the Watch-Night Service in the room of the first preacher I had heard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>The hall was a big square one, capable of seating some three hundred
+people. There was a raised platform at the end; a broad passage way all
+round the room had seats on both sides of it, and made a small square of
+seats in the centre. I sat down in the middle of this middle square, and
+the room was soon nearly full. The service began with a hymn. I neither
+sang nor rose, and I noticed numbers who did not. In peculiar isolation
+of mind my heart warmed to these, and I was conscious of rising
+hostility for the creatures of praise. There was one strong young fellow
+about three places from me who remained seated. Glancing behind the
+backs of those who were standing between us I caught his eye, which met
+mine casually and perhaps lightened a little. He had a rather fine face,
+intelligent, possibly at better times humorous. I was not so solitary.</p>
+
+<p>A man singing on my left offered me a share of his hymn-book. I declined
+courteously. The woman on my right asked me to share hers. That I
+declined too. Some asked the young fellow to rise, but he refused
+quietly. Yet I noticed some of those who had remained seated gave in to
+solicitations or to the sound or to some memory, and rose. Yet many
+still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> remained. They were all men, and most of them young.</p>
+
+<p>After the hymn followed prayer by the minister, who was surrounded on
+the da&iuml;s by some dozen girls. I noticed that few were very good-looking;
+but in their faces was religious fervour. Yet they kept their eyes on
+the man. The prayer was long, intolerably and trickily eloquent and
+rhetorical, very self-conscious. The man posed before the throne. But I
+listened to every word, half absorbed though I was in myself. He was
+followed in prayer by ambitious and emotional people in the seats. One
+woman prayed for those who would not bow the knee. Once more a hymn
+followed, "Bringing home the sheaves."</p>
+
+<p>The air is not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it
+tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of
+voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to
+move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left
+did not. The sermon followed, and I felt as if I had escaped a
+humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>What the preacher said I cannot remember, nor is it of any importance.
+He was not an intellectual man, nor had he many gifts beyond his rather
+sleek manner and a soft manageable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> voice. He was obviously proud of
+that, and reckoned it an instrument of success. It became as monotonous
+to me as the slow oily swell of a tropic sea in calm. I would have
+preferred a Boanerges, a bitter John Knox. The intent of his sermon was
+the usual one at such periods; this was the end of the year, the
+beginning was at hand. Naturally he addressed himself to those who were
+not of his flock; it seemed to me, as it doubtless seemed to others,
+that he spoke to me directly.</p>
+
+<p>The custom of mankind to divide time into years has had an effect on us,
+and we cannot help feeling it. Childhood does not understand how
+artificial the portioning of time is; the New Year affects us even when
+we recognise the fact. It required no florid eloquence of the preacher
+to convince me of past folly and weakness; but it was that weakness that
+made me weak now in my allowing his insistence on the New Year to affect
+me. I was weak, lonely, foolish. Oh, I acknowledged I wanted help! But
+could I get help here?</p>
+
+<p>It was past eleven when they rose to sing another hymn. Many who had not
+sung before sang now. Some of the girls from the platform came down and
+offered us hymn-books. A few took them half-shamefacedly; some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> declined
+with thanks; some ignored the extended book. And after two hymns were
+sung and some more prayers said, it was half-past eleven. They announced
+five minutes for silent meditation. Looking round, I saw my friend on
+the left sitting with folded arms. He was obviously in no need of five
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>In the Free Library I had renewed much of my ancient scientific reading,
+and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to
+explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I
+was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked
+myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how
+the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature
+could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the
+intellect by the force of his own personality. But all the same the
+hour, the time, and the song followed by silence, and the silence by
+song, affected me and affected many. What had I to look forward to when
+I went out into the street? And if I yielded they might, nay would, help
+me to work. I laughed a little at myself, and was scornful of my
+thoughts. They were singing again.</p>
+
+<p>This time the band of women left the da&iuml;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> and in a body went slowly
+round and round the aisle isolating the centre seats from the platform
+and the sides. From the platform the preacher called on the others to
+rise and join them, for it was nearly twelve o'clock, the New Year was
+at hand. Most of the congregation obeyed him, I counted but fifteen or
+twenty who refused.</p>
+
+<p>The volume of the singing increased as the seats emptied, in it there
+was religious fervour; it appealed strongly even to me. I saw some young
+fellows rise and join the procession; perhaps three or four. There were
+now less than twelve seated. The preacher spoke to us personally; he
+insisted on the passing minutes of the dying year. And still the singers
+passed us. Some leant over and called to us. Our bitter band lessened
+one by one.</p>
+
+<p>Then from the procession came these girl acolytes, and, dividing
+themselves, they appealed to us and prayed. They were not beautiful
+perhaps, but they were women. We outcasts of the prairie and the camp
+fire and the streets had been greatly divorced from feminine sweet
+influences, and these succeeded where speech and prayer and song had
+failed. As one spoke to me I saw hard resolution wither in many. What
+woman had spoken kindly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> them in this hard land since they left their
+eastern homes? Why should they pain them? And as they joined the singing
+band of believers the girls came to those of us who still stayed, and
+doubled and redoubled their entreaties. That it was not what they said,
+but those who said it, massing influences and suggestion, showed itself
+when he who had been stubborn to one yielded with moist eyes to two. And
+three overcame him who had mutely resisted less.</p>
+
+<p>They knew their strength, and spoke softly with the voice of loving
+women. And not a soul had spoken to me so in my far and weary songless
+passage from the Atlantic States to the Pacific Coast. Long-repressed
+emotions rose in me as the hair of one brushed my cheek, as the hand of
+another lay upon my shoulder and mutely bade me rise; as another called
+me, as another beckoned. I looked round like a half-fascinated beast,
+and I caught the eye again of the man on my left. He and I were the only
+ones left sitting there. All the rest had risen and were singing with
+the singers.</p>
+
+<p>In his eye, I doubt not, I saw what he saw in mine. A look of
+encouragement, a demand for it, doubt, an emotional struggle, and
+deeper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> than all a queer bitter amusement, that said plainly, "If you
+fail me, I fall, but I would rather not play the hypocrite in these hard
+times." We nodded rather mentally than actually, and were encouraged, I
+knew if I yielded I was yielding to something founded essentially on
+sex, and for my honesty's sake I would not fail.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, it is no use," I said to her who spoke to me, and, struggling
+with myself, I put her hand from me. But still they moved past and sang,
+and the girls would not leave me till the first stroke of midnight
+sounded from the clock upon the wall. They then went one by one and
+joined the band. I turned again to my man, and conscious of my own hard
+fight, I knew what his had been. We looked at each other, and being men,
+were half ashamed that another should know we had acted rightly
+according to our code, and had won a victory over ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>And now we were truly outcasts, for no one spoke to us again. The
+preacher prayed and we still sat there. But he cast us no word, and the
+urgent women were good only to their conquered. Perhaps in their souls
+was some sense of personal defeat; they had been rejected as women and
+as angels of the Lord.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> We two at anyrate sat beyond the reach of their
+graciousness; their eyes were averted or lifted up; we lay in outer
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>As they began to sing once more we both rose and with a friendly look at
+each other went out into the streets of the hostile city. It is easy to
+understand why we did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>I never saw him again.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SOME_PORTUGUESE_SKETCHES" id="SOME_PORTUGUESE_SKETCHES"></a>SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES</h2>
+
+<p>The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is
+touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we
+fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff
+excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for
+Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself to a
+triumphant foreigner? For my own part, I found a kind of gentle,
+unobtrusive politeness even among those Portuguese who knew I was
+English when I went to Lisbon on the last occasion of the two nations
+quarrelling about a mud flat on the Zambesi. Occasionally, on being
+taken for an American, I did not correct the mistake, for having no
+quarrel with Americans they sometimes confided to me the bitterness of
+their hearts against the English. I stayed in Lisbon at the Hotel
+Universal in the Rua Nova da Almeda, a purely Portuguese house where
+only stray Englishmen came. At the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> one night I had a
+conversation with a mild-mannered Portuguese which showed the curious
+ignorance and almost childish vanity of the race. I asked him in French
+if he spoke English. He did so badly and we mingled the two languages
+and at last talked vivaciously. He was an ardent politician and hated
+the English virulently, telling me so with curious circumlocutions. He
+was of opinion, he said, that though the English were unfortunately
+powerful on the sea, on land his nation was a match for us. As for the
+English in Africa, he declared the Portuguese able to sweep them into
+the sea. But though he hated the English, his admiration for Queen
+Victoria was as unbounded as our own earth-hunger. She was, he told me,
+entirely on the side of the Portuguese in the sad troubles which English
+politicians were then causing. He detailed, as particularly as if he had
+been present, a strange scene reported to have taken place between
+Soveral, their ambassador, and Lord Salisbury, in which discussion grew
+heated. It seemed as if they would part in anger. At last Soveral arose
+and exclaimed with much dignity: "You must now excuse me, my Lord
+Salisbury, I have to dine with the Queen to-night." My Lord Salisbury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+started, looked incredulous, and said coldly, "You are playing with me.
+This cannot be." "Indeed," said the ambassador, producing a telegram
+from Windsor, "it is as I say." And then Salisbury turned pale, fell
+back in his chair, and gasped for breath. "And after that," said my
+informant, "things went well." Several people at the table listened to
+this story and seemed to believe it. With much difficulty I preserved a
+grave countenance, and congratulated him on the possession of an
+ambassador who was more than a match for our Foreign Minister. Before
+the end of dinner he informed me that the English were as a general rule
+savages, while the Portuguese were civilised. Having lived in London he
+knew this to be so. Finding that he knew the East End of our gigantic
+city, I found it difficult to contradict him.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Lisbon, as far as visible poverty is concerned, is far better
+than London. I saw few very miserable people; beggars were not at all
+numerous; in a week I was only asked twice for alms. One constantly
+hears that Lisbon is dirty, and as full of foul odours as Coleridge's
+Cologne. I did not find it so, and the bright sunshine and the fine
+colour of the houses might well compensate for some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>draw-backs. The
+houses of this regular town are white, and pale yellow, and fine
+worn-out pink, with narrow green painted verandahs which soon lose
+crudeness in the intense light. The windows of the larger blocks are
+numerous and set in long regular lines; the streets if narrow run into
+open squares blazing with white unsoiled monuments. All day long the
+ways are full of people who are fairly but unostentatiously polite. They
+do not stare one out of countenance however one may be dressed. In
+Antwerp a man who objects to being wondered at may not wear a light
+suit. Lisbon is more cosmopolitan. But the beauty of the town of Lisbon
+is not added to by the beauty of its inhabitants. The women are
+curiously the reverse of lovely. Only occasionally I saw a face which
+was attractive by the odd conjuncture of an olive skin and light grey
+eyes. They do not wear mantillas. The lower classes use a shawl. Those
+who are of the <i>bourgeois</i> class or above it differ little from
+Londoners. The working or loafing men, for they laugh and loaf, and work
+and chaff and chatter at every corner, are more distinct in costume,
+wearing the flat felt sombrero with turned-up edges that one knows from
+pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still
+retains a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> smack of it in the way they disregard the sleeves and hang it
+from their shoulders. These men are decidedly not so ugly as the women,
+and vary wonderfully in size, colour and complexion, though a big
+Portuguese is a rarity. The strong point in both sexes is their natural
+gift for wearing colour, for choosing and blending or matching tints.</p>
+
+<p>These Portuguese men and women work hard when they do not loaf and
+chatter. The porters, who stand in knots with cords upon their
+shoulders, bear huge loads; a characteristic of the place is this
+load-bearing and the size of the burdens. Women carry mighty parcels
+upon their heads; men great baskets. Fish is carried in spreading flat
+baskets by girls. They look afar off like gigantic hats: further still,
+like quaint odd toadstools in motion. All household furniture removing
+among the poor is done by hand. Two or four men load up a kind of flat
+hand-barrow without wheels till it is pyramidal and colossal with piled
+gear. Then passing poles through the loop of ropes, with a slow effort
+they raise it up and advance at a funereal and solemn pace. The slowness
+with which they move is pathetic. It is suggestive of a dead burden or
+of some street accident. But of these latter there must be very few;
+there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> not much vehicular traffic in Lisbon. It is comparatively rare
+to see anything like cruelty to horses. The mules which draw the
+primitive ramshackle trams have the worst time of it, and are obliged to
+pull their load every now and again off one line on to another, being
+urged thereto with some brutality. But these trams do not run up the
+very hilly parts of the city; the main lines run along the Tagus east
+and west of the great Square of the Black Horse. And by the river the
+city is flat.</p>
+
+<p>Only a little way up, in my street for instance, it rapidly becomes
+hilly. On entering the hotel, to my surprise I went downstairs to my
+bedroom. On looking out of the window a street was even then sixty feet
+below me. The floor underneath me did not make part of the hotel, but
+was a portion of a great building occupied by the poorer people and let
+out in flats. During the day, as I sat by the window working, the noise
+was not intolerable, but at night when the Lisbonensians took to amusing
+themselves they roused me from a well-earned sleep. They shouted and
+sang and made mingled and indistinguishable uproars which rose wildly
+through the narrow deep space and burst into my open window. After long
+endurance I rose and shut it, preferring heat to insomnia. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> in the
+day, after that discord, I always had the harmonious compensations of
+true colour. Even when the sun shone brilliantly I could not distinguish
+the grey blue of the deep shadows, so much blue was in the painted or
+distempered outer walls. It was in Lisbon that I first began to discern
+the mental effect of colour, and to see that it comes truly and of
+necessity from a people's temperament. Can a busy race be true
+colourists?</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of the town&mdash;the eastern quarters&mdash;one cannot help
+noticing the still remaining influence of the Moors. There are even some
+true relics; but certainly the influence survives in flat-sided houses
+with small windows and Moorish ornament high up just under the edge of
+the flat roof. One day, being tired of the more noisy western town, I
+went east and climbed up and up, being alternately in deep shadow and
+burning sunlight and turned round by a barrack, where some soldiers eyed
+me as a possible Englishman. I hoped to see the Tagus at last, for here
+the houses are not so lofty, and presently, being on very high ground, I
+caught a view of it, darkly dotted with steamers, over some flat roofs.
+Towards the sea it narrows, but above Lisbon it widens out like a lake.
+On the far side was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> a white town, beyond that again hills blue with
+lucid atmosphere. At my feet (I leant against a low wall) was a terraced
+garden with a big vine spread on a trellis, making&mdash;or promising to make
+in the later spring&mdash;a long shady arbour, for as yet the leaves were
+scanty and freshly green. Every house was faint blue or varied pink, or
+worn-out, washed-out, sun-dried green. All the tones were beautiful and
+modest, fitting the sun yet not competing with it. In London the colour
+would break the level of dull tints and angrily protest, growing scarlet
+and vivid and wrathful. And just as I looked away from the river and the
+vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from
+a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going
+quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on
+the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not
+sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise
+darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they
+laugh and are merry even after they have children of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Though little apt to do what is supposed to be a traveller's duty in
+visiting certain obvious places of interest, I one day hunted for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+English cemetery in which Fielding lies buried, and found it at last
+just at the back of a little open park or garden where children were
+playing. On going in I found myself alone save for a gardener who was
+cutting down some rank grass with a scythe. This cemetery is the
+quietest and most beautiful I ever saw. One might imagine the dead were
+all friends. They are at anyrate strangers in a far land, an English
+party with one great man among them. I found his tomb easily, for it is
+made of massive blocks of stone. Having brought from home his little
+<i>Voyage to Lisbon</i>, written just before he died, I took it out, sat down
+on the stone, and read a page or two. He says farewell at the very end.
+As I sat, the strange and melancholy suggestion of the dead man speaking
+out of that great kind heart of his, now dust, the strong contrast
+between the brilliant sunlight and the heavy sombreness of the cypresses
+of death, the song of spring birds and the sound of children's voices,
+were strangely pathetic. I rose up and paced that little deadman's
+ground which was still and quiet. And on another grave I read but a
+name, the name of some woman "Eleanor." After life, and work, and love,
+this is the end. Yet we do remember Fielding.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>On the following day I went to Cintra out of sheer <i>ennui</i>, for my
+inability to talk Portuguese made me silent and solitary perforce. And
+at Cintra I evaded my obvious duty, and only looked at the lofty rock on
+which the Moorish castle stands. For one thing the hill was swathed in
+mists, it rained at intervals, a kind of bitter <i>tramontana</i> was
+blowing. And after running the gauntlet of a crowd of vociferous
+donkey-boys I was anxious to get out of the town. I made acquaintance
+with a friendly Cintran dog and went for a walk. My companion did not
+object to my nationality or my inability to express myself in fluent
+Portuguese, and amused himself by tearing the leaves of the Australian
+gum-trees, which flourish very well in Portugal. But at last, in cold
+disgust at the uncharitable puritanic weather which destroyed all beauty
+in the landscape, I returned to the town. Here I passed the prison. On
+spying me the prisoners crowded to the barred windows; those on the
+lower floor protruded their hands, those on the upper storey sent down a
+basket by a long string; I emptied my pockets of their coppers. It
+seemed not unlike giving nuts to our human cousins at the Zoo. Surely
+Darwin is the prince of pedigree-makers. Before him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> darings of the
+bravest herald never went beyond Adam. He has opened great possibilities
+to the College dealing with inherited dignity of ancient fame.</p>
+
+<p>This Cintra is a town on a hill and in a hole, a kind of half-funnel
+opening on a long plain which is dotted by small villages and farms. If
+the donkey-boys were extirpated it might be fine on a fine day.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the station, I ensconced myself in a carriage out of the
+way of the cutting wind, and talked fluent bad French with a kindly old
+Portuguese who looked like a Quaker. Two others came in and entered into
+a lively conversation in which Charing Cross and London Bridge occurred
+at intervals. It took an hour and a quarter to do the fifteen mites
+between Cintra and Lisbon. I was told it was considered by no means a
+very slow train. Travelling in Portugal may do something to reconcile
+one to the trains in the south-east of England.</p>
+
+<p>The last place I visited in Lisbon was the market. Outside, the glare of
+the hot sun was nearly blinding. Just in that neighbourhood all the main
+buildings are purely white, even the shadows make one's eyes ache. In
+the open spaces of the squares even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>brilliantly-clad women seemed black
+against white. Inside, in a half-shade under glass, a dense crowd moved
+and chattered and stirred to and fro. The women wore all the colours of
+flowers and fruit, but chiefly orange. And on the stone floor great flat
+baskets of oranges, each with a leaf of green attached to it, shone like
+pure gold. Then there were red apples, and red handkerchiefs twisted
+over dark hair. Milder looking in tint was the pale Japanese apple with
+an artistic refinement of paler colour. The crowd, the good humour, the
+noise, even the odour, which was not so offensive as in our English
+Covent Garden, made a striking and brilliant impression. Returning to
+the hotel, I was met by a scarlet procession of priests and acolytes who
+bore the Host. The passers-by mostly bared their heads. Perhaps but a
+little while ago every one might have been worldly wise to follow their
+example, for the Inquisition lasted till 1808 in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of that day I went on board the <i>Dunottar Castle</i>, and
+in the evening sailed for Madeira.</p>
+
+<p>A week's odd moments of study and enforced intercourse with waiters and
+male chambermaids, whose French was even more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> primitive than my own,
+had taught me a little Portuguese, that curious, unbeautiful sounding
+tongue, and I found it useful even on board the steamer. At anyrate I
+was able to interpret for a Funchal lawyer who sat by me at table, and
+afterwards invited me to see him. This smattering of Portuguese I found
+more useful still in Madeira, or at Funchal&mdash;its capital&mdash;for I stayed
+in native hotels. It is the only possible way of learning anything about
+the people in a short visit. Moreover, the English hotels are full of
+invalids. It is curious to note the present prevalence of consumption
+among the natives of Funchal. It is a good enough proof on the first
+face of it that consumption is catching. There is a large hospital here
+for Portuguese patients, though the disease was unknown before the
+English made a health resort of it.</p>
+
+<p>Funchal has been a thousand times described, and is well worthy of it.
+Lying as it does in a long curve with the whole town visible from the
+sea, as the houses grow fewer and fewer upon the slopes of the lofty
+mountain background, it is curiously theatrical and scenic in effect. It
+is artistically arranged, well-placed; a brilliant jewel in a dark-green
+setting, and the sea is amethyst and turquoise.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>I stayed in an hotel whose proprietor was an ardent Republican. One
+evening he mentioned the fact in broken English, and I told him that in
+theory I also was of that creed. He grew tremendously excited, opened a
+bottle of Madeira, shared it with me and two Portuguese, and insisted on
+singing the Marseillaise until a crowd collected in front of the house,
+whose open windows looked on an irregular square. Then he and his
+friends shouted "Viva la partida dos Republicanos!" The charges at this
+hotel were ridiculously small&mdash;only three and fourpence a day for board
+and lodging. And it was by no means bad; at anyrate it was always
+possible to get fruit, including loquats, strawberries, custard apples,
+bananas, oranges, and the passion-flower fruit, which is not enticing on
+a first acquaintance, and resembles an an&aelig;mic pomegranate. Eggs, too,
+were twenty-eight for tenpence; fish was at nominal prices.</p>
+
+<p>But there is nothing to do in Funchal save eat and swim or ride. The
+climate is enervating, and when the east wind blows from the African
+coast it is impossible to move save in the most spiritless and languid
+way. It may make an invalid comparatively strong, but I am sure it might
+reduce a strong man to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> state of confirmed laziness little removed
+from actual illness. I was glad one day to get horses, in company with
+an acquaintance, and ride over the mountains to Fayal, on the north side
+of the island. And it was curious to see the obstinate incredulity of
+the natives when we declared we meant going there and back in one day.
+The double journey was only a little over twenty-six miles, yet it was
+declared impossible. Our landlord drew ghastly pictures of the state we
+should be in, declaring we did not know what we were doing; he called in
+his wife, who lifted up her hands against our rashness and crossed
+herself piously when we were unmoved; he summoned the owner of the
+horses, who said the thing could not be done. But my friend was not to
+be persuaded, declaring that Englishmen could do anything, and that he
+would show them. He explained that we were both very much more than
+admirable horsemen, and only minimised his own feats in the colonies by
+kindly exaggerating mine in America, and finally it was settled gravely
+that we were to be at liberty to kill ourselves and ruin the horses for
+a lump sum of two pounds ten, provided we found food and wine for the
+two men who were to be our guides. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> morning, at six o'clock, we
+set out in a heavy shower of rain. Before we had gone up the hill a
+thousand feet we were wet through, but a thousand more brought us into
+bright sunlight. Below lay Funchal, underneath a white sheet of
+rain-cloud; the sea beyond it was darkened here and there; it was at
+first difficult to distinguish the outlying Deserta Islands from sombre
+fogbanks. But as we still went up and up the day brightened more and
+more, and when Funchal was behind and under the first hills the sea
+began to glow and glitter. Here and there it shone like watered silk.
+The Desertas showed plainly as rocky masses; a distant steamer trailed a
+thin ribbon of smoke above the water. Close at hand a few sheep and
+goats ran from us; now and again a horse or two stared solemnly at us;
+and we all grew cheerful and laughed. For the air was keen and bracing;
+we were on the plateau, nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and in
+a climate quite other than that which choked the distant low-lying town.
+Then we began to go down.</p>
+
+<p>All the main roads of the Ilha da Madeira are paved with close-set
+kidney pebbles, to save them from being washed out and destroyed by the
+sudden violent semi-tropical rains.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> Even on this mountain it was so,
+and our horses, with their rough-shod feet, rattled down the pass
+without faltering. The road zigzagged after the manner of mountain
+roads. When we reached the bottom of a deep ravine it seemed impossible
+that we could have got there, and getting out seemed equally impossible.
+The slopes of the hills were often fifty degrees. Everywhere was a thick
+growth of brush and trees. At times the road ran almost dangerously
+close to a precipice. But at last, about eleven o'clock, we began to get
+out of the thick entanglement of mountains and in the distance could see
+the ocean on the north side of the island. "Fayal is there," said our
+guide, pointing, as it seemed, but a little way off. Yet it took two
+hours' hard riding to reach it. Our path lay at first along the back of
+a great spur of the main mountain; it narrowed till there was a
+precipice on either side&mdash;on the right hand some seven or eight hundred
+feet, on the left more than a thousand. I had not looked down the like
+since I crossed the Jackass Mountain on the Fraser River in British
+Columbia. Underneath us were villages&mdash;scattered huts, built like
+bee-hives. The piece of level ground beneath was dotted with them. The
+place looked like some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> gigantic apiary. The dots of people seemed
+little larger than bees. And soon we came to the same stack-like houses
+close to our path. It was Sunday, and these village folks were dressed
+in their best clothes. They were curiously respectful, for were we not
+<i>gente de gravate</i>&mdash;people who wore cravats&mdash;gentlemen, in a word? So
+they rose up and uncovered. We saluted them in passing. It was a
+primitive sight. As we came where the huts were thicker, small crowds
+came to see us. Now on the right hand we saw a ridge with pines on it,
+suggesting, from the shape of the hill, a bristly boar's back; on the
+left the valley widened; in front loomed up a gigantic mass of rock,
+"The Eagle's Cliff," in shape like Gibraltar. It was 1900 feet high, and
+even yet it was far below us. But now the path pitched suddenly
+downwards; there were no paving-pebbles here, only the native hummocks
+of rock and the harder clay not yet washed away. The road was like a
+torrent-bed, for indeed it was a torrent when it rained; but still our
+horses were absolute in faith and stumbled not. And the Eagle's Cliff
+grew bigger and bigger still as we plunged down the last of the spur to
+a river then scanty of stream, and we were on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> flat again not far
+from the sea. But to reach Fayal it was necessary to climb again,
+turning to the left.</p>
+
+<p>Here we found a path which, with all my experience of Western America
+mountain travel, seemed very hard to beat in point of rockiness and
+steepness. We had to lead our horses and climb most carefully. But when
+a quarter of a mile had been done in this way it was possible to mount
+again, and we were close to Fayal. I had thought all the time that it
+was a small town, but it appeared to be no more than the scattered huts
+we had passed, or those we had noted from the lofty spur. Our objective
+was a certain house belonging to a Portuguese landowner who occupied the
+position of an English squire in the olden days. Both my friend and I
+had met him several times in Funchal, and, by the aid of an interpreter,
+had carried on a conversation. But my Portuguese was dinner-table talk
+of the purely necessary order, and my companion's was more exiguous than
+my own. So we decided to camp before reaching his house, and eat our
+lunch undisturbed by the trouble of being polite without words. We told
+our guide this, and as he was supposed to understand English we took it
+for granted that he did so when we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> ordered him to pick some spot to
+camp a good way from the landowner's house. But in spite of our
+laborious explanations he took us on to the very estate, and plumped us
+down not fifty yards from the house. As we were ignorant of the fact
+that this was the house, we sent the boy there for hot water to make
+coffee, and then to our horror we saw the very man whom we just then
+wanted to avoid. We all talked together and gesticulated violently. I
+tried French vainly; my little Portuguese grew less and less, and
+disappeared from my tongue; and then in despair we hailed the cause of
+the whole misfortune, and commanded him to explain. What he explained I
+know not, but finally our friend seemed less hurt than he had been, and
+he returned to his house on our promising to go there as soon as our
+lunch was finished.</p>
+
+<p>The whole feeling of this scene&mdash;of this incident, of the place, the
+mountains, the primitive people&mdash;was so curious that it was difficult to
+think we were only four days from England. Though the people were gentle
+and kind and polite, they seemed no more civilised, from our point of
+view, than many Indians I have seen. Indeed, there are Indian
+communities in America which are far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> ahead of them in culture. I seemed
+once more in a wild country. But our host (for, being on his ground, we
+were his guests) was most amiable and polite. It certainly was rather
+irksome to sit solemnly in his best room and stare at each other without
+a word. Below the open window stood our guide, so when it became
+absolutely necessary for me to make our friend understand, or for me to
+die of suppression of urgent speech, I called to Jo&atilde;o and bade him
+interpret. We were silent again until wine was brought. Then his
+daughter, almost the only beautiful Portuguese or Madeiran girl I ever
+saw, came in. We were introduced, and, in default of the correct thing
+in her native language, I informed her, in a polite Spanish phrase I
+happened to recollect, that I was at her feet. Then, as I knew her
+brother in Funchal, I called for the interpreter and told her so as an
+interesting piece of information. She gave me a rose, and, looking out
+of the window, she taught me the correct Portuguese for Eagle's
+Cliff&mdash;"Penha d'aguila." We were quite friends.</p>
+
+<p>It was then time for us to return if we meant to keep to our word and do
+the double journey in one day. But a vociferous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>expostulation came from
+our host. He talked fast, waved his hands, shook his head, and was
+evidently bent on keeping us all night. We again called in the
+interpreter, explaining that our reputation as Englishmen, as horsemen,
+as men, rested on our getting back to Funchal that night, and, seeing
+the point as a man of honour, he most regretfully gave way, and, having
+his own horse saddled, accompanied us some miles on the road. We rode up
+another spur, and came to a kind of wayside hut where three or four
+paths joined. Here was congregated a brightly-clad crowd of nearly a
+hundred men, women and children. They rose and saluted us; we turned and
+took off our hats. I noticed particularly that this man who owned so
+much land and was such a magnate there did the same. I fancied that
+these people had gathered there as much to see us pass as for Sunday
+chatter. For English travellers on the north side of the island are not
+very common, and I daresay we were something in the nature of an event.
+Turning at this point to the left, we plunged sharply downwards towards
+a bridge over a torrent, and here parted from our land-owning friend. We
+began to climb an impossible-looking hill, which my horse strongly
+objected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> to. On being urged he tried to back off the road, and I had
+some difficulty in persuading him that he could not kill me without
+killing himself. But a slower pace reconciled him to the road, and as I
+was in no great hurry I allowed him to choose his own. Certainly the
+animals had had a hard day of it even so far, and we had much to do
+before night. We were all of us glad to reach the Divide and stay for a
+while at the Poizo, or Government rest-house, which was about half-way.
+One gets tolerable Madeira there.</p>
+
+<p>It was eight or half-past when we came down into Funchal under a moon
+which seemed to cast as strongly-marked shadows as the very sun itself.
+The rain of the morning had long ago passed away, and the air was
+warm&mdash;indeed, almost close&mdash;after the last part of the ride on the
+plateau, which began at night-time to grow dim with ragged wreaths of
+mist. Our horses were so glad to accomplish the journey that they
+trotted down the steep stony streets, which rang loudly to their iron
+hoofs. When we stopped at the stable I think I was almost as glad as
+they; for, after all, even to an Englishman with his country's
+reputation to support, twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle are
+somewhat tiring. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> though I was much pleased to have seen more of the
+Ilha da Madeira than most visitors, I remembered that I had not been on
+horseback for nearly five years.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_PONDICHERRY_BOY" id="A_PONDICHERRY_BOY"></a>A PONDICHERRY BOY</h2>
+
+<p>When I first went out to the Australian colonies in 1876 in the
+<i>Hydrabad</i>, a big sailing ship registered as belonging to Bombay, I had
+a very curious time of it, take it altogether. It was my first real
+experience of the outside world, and the hundred and two days the
+<i>Hydrabad</i> took from Liverpool to Melbourne made a very valuable piece
+of schooling for a greenhorn. I was a steerage passenger, and the
+steerage of a sailing vessel twenty-five years ago was something to see
+and smell. Perhaps it is no better now, but then it was certainly very
+bad. The food was poor, the quarters dirty, the accommodation far too
+limited to swing even the traditional cat in, and my companions were for
+the most part Irishmen of the lowest and poorest peasant class. In these
+days I was quite fresh from home and was rather particular in my tastes.
+Some of that has been knocked out of me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> since. A great deal of it was
+knocked out of me in that passage.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was, take it altogether, an astonishingly fertile trip for a
+young and green lad who was not yet nineteen. The <i>Hydrabad</i> usually
+made a kind of triangular voyage. She took emigrants and a general cargo
+to Melbourne, loaded horses there for Australia, and came back to
+England once more with anything going in the shape of cargo to be picked
+up in the Hooghly. She carried a Calashee crew, that is, a crew of mixed
+Orientals, and among them were native Hindoos, Klings, Malays,
+Sidi-boys. In those days I had not been in the United States and had not
+yet imbibed any great contempt for coloured people. They were on the
+whole infinitely more interesting than the Irish. I knew nothing of the
+world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The
+old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who
+took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a
+pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the
+sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he
+believed to be English, he could not read a word, even in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>Persi-Arabic character. The cooks, or <i>bandaddies</i>, were also friends
+of mine, and more than once they supplemented the intolerably meagre
+steerage fare by giving me something good to eat. I soon knew every man
+in the crew, and could call each by his name. Sometimes I went on the
+lookout with one of them, and one particular Malay was very keen on
+teaching me his language. So far as I remember the languages talked by
+the crew included Malay, Hindustani, Tamil and, oddly enough, French.
+That language was of course spoken by someone who came from Pondicherry,
+that small piece of country which, with Chandernagor, represents the
+French-Indian Empire of Du Plessis's time. I had learnt a little
+Hindustani and Malay, and could understand all the usual names of the
+sails and gear before I discovered that there was someone on board whose
+native tongue was French, or who, at anyrate, could talk it fluently
+enough. We were far to the south of the Line before I found this out.
+For, of course, among his fellows the boy from Pondicherry spoke
+Hindustani mixed with Malay and perhaps with Tamil. I well remember how
+I made the discovery. It was odd enough to me, but far stranger, far
+more wonderful,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> far more full of mystery to my little, excitable and
+very dark-skinned friend. I daresay, if he lives, that to this hour he
+remembers the English boy who so surprised him.</p>
+
+<p>The weather was intensely hot and I had climbed for a little air into
+one of the boats lying in the skids. The shadow of the main-topsail
+screened me from the sun; there was just enough wind to keep the canvas
+doing its work in silence. It was Sunday and the whole ship was
+curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently
+disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who
+came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which
+he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first
+time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know
+a little French. I knew remarkably little myself; I could read it with
+difficulty. My colloquial French was then, as now, intensely and
+intolerably English. I said, "<i>Bon jour</i>, Pondicherry!"</p>
+
+<p>The result was astounding. He turned to me with an awe-stricken look, as
+he dropped his tin plate with its precious burden, and holding out both
+hands as though to embrace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> a fellow countryman, he exclaimed in
+French,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what, do <i>you</i> come from Pondicherry?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two I did not follow his meaning. I did not see what
+French meant to him; I could not tell that it represented his little
+fatherland. I had imagined he knew it was a foreign tongue. But it was
+not foreign to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said, "I am an Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on a thwart and stared at me as if I was some strange
+miracle. His next words let me into the heart of his mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"It is <i>not</i> possible. You <i>speak</i> Pondicherry!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not even know that he was speaking French, the language of a
+great Western nation. He could not know that I was doing my feeble best
+to speak the language of a great literature; the language of Voltaire,
+of Victor Hugo, of diplomacy. No, he and I were speaking Pondicherry,
+the language of a derelict corner of mighty Hindustan. Now he eyed me
+with suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"When were you there?" he demanded in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>If I was not Pondicherry born I must at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> least have lived there in order
+to have learnt the language.</p>
+
+<p>"Pondy, I was never there," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>He evidently did not believe me. I had some mysterious reason for
+concealing that I was either Pondicherry born or that I had resided
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you didn't know it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have not been in Villianur?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Or Bahur?"</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. He shook his and stared at me suspiciously. Perhaps I
+had committed some crime there.</p>
+
+<p>"Then how did you learn it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I learnt it in England."</p>
+
+<p>That I was undoubtedly speaking the unhappy truth would have been
+obvious to any Frenchman. But to Pondicherry what I said was so
+obviously a gross and almost foolish piece of fiction that he shook his
+head disdainfully. And yet why should I lie? He spoke so rapidly that I
+could not follow him.</p>
+
+<p>"If you speak so fast I cannot understand," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then," he replied hopefully, "it is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> long time since you were
+there. Perhaps you were very young then?"</p>
+
+<p>I once more insisted that I had never been at Pondicherry, or even in
+any part of India. All I said convinced him the more that I was not
+speaking the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak Hindustani with the <i>bandaddy</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It is true I had learnt a dozen phrases and had once or twice used them.
+To say I had learnt them in the ship was useless.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you have been in India. Why will you not tell me the truth,
+sahib? I am the only one from Pondicherry but you."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke mournfully. I was denying my own fatherland, denying help and
+comradeship to my own countryman! It was, thought Pondicherry, cruel,
+unkind, unpatriotic. He gathered up the mess he had spilt and descended
+sorrowfully to the main deck to discuss me with his friends among the
+crew. As I heard afterwards from the wrinkled old serang, there were
+many arguments started in the fo'castle as to my place of origin. It was
+said, by those who took sides against Pondicherry, that even if I knew
+"Pondicherry" (and for that they only had his word), I also undoubtedly
+knew English. And when did any of the white rulers of Pondicherry know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+that tongue? Some of the Lascars who had been on the Madras coast in
+country boats swore that no one spoke English there. On the whole, as I
+came from England and knew English it was more likely that I was what I
+said than that I came from Pondicherry. But even so all agreed it was a
+mystery that I could speak it. The serang came to me quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Robat, you tell me. You come Pondicherry?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, serang," said "Robat."</p>
+
+<p>"But you speak Pondicherry the boy say, Robat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I speak it, serang. Many English people speak it a little. Very
+easy for English people learn a little, just the same as we learn <i>jeldy
+jow, toom sooar</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And as the serang was well acquainted with the capabilities of English
+officers with regard to abusive language, he went away convinced that
+"Pondicherry" and "Hindustani" insults were perhaps taught in English
+schools after all.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of my refusing to take Pondicherry into my confidence he
+remained on friendly, if suspicious, terms with me. When I said a word
+or two of French to him he beamed all over, and turned to the others as
+much as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> say, "Didn't I tell you he came from my country?" For
+nothing that I and the serang or his friends said convinced him, or even
+shook his opinion. He used to sneak up to me occasionally as he worked
+about the decks and spring a question on me about someone at
+Pondicherry. Of course I had heard of no one there. But my ignorance was
+wholly put on; he was sure of that. Often and often I caught his eyes on
+me, and I knew his mind was pondering theories to account for my
+conduct. It was all very well for me or anyone else to say that
+Pondicherry was talked elsewhere than in his own home. He had travelled,
+he had been in Australia, in England, in many parts of the East, and he
+had never, never met anyone but himself and myself who knew it! I think
+he would have given me a month's pay if I would have only owned up to
+having been at Pondicherry. He certainly offered me an ample plateful of
+curried shark, a part of one we had caught days before, if I would be
+frank about the matter; but even my desire to obtain possession of that
+smell and drop it overboard did not tempt me to a white lie. I persisted
+in remaining an Englishman through the whole passage of one hundred and
+two days. And then at last, after good times and bad, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> calms on
+the Line and no small hurricane south of stormy Cape Leuuwin, we came up
+with Cape Otway and entered the Heads. Pondicherry's time for solving
+the mystery grew short. In another few hours the passengers would go
+ashore and be never seen again. For my own part, though the passage had
+been one of pure discomfort, I was almost sorry to leave the old ship. I
+had to quit a number of friends, black and white, and had to face a new
+and perhaps unfriendly world. Though the <i>Hydrabad</i> half-starved me I
+was at anyrate sure of water and biscuit. And many of the poor Lascars
+had been chums to me. As I made preparations to leave the vessel and
+stood on deck waiting, I saw Pondicherry sneaking about in the
+background. I said farewell to his old serang, and the Malay
+quartermasters, who were all fine men, and to some of the meaner outcast
+Klings, and then Pondicherry darted up to me. I knew quite well what was
+in his mind. It was in his very eyes. I was now going, and should be
+seen no more. Perhaps at the last I might be induced to speak the truth.
+And even if I did not own up bravely, it was at anyrate necessary to bid
+farewell to a countryman, though he denied his own country. He came
+close to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> in the crowd and touched my sleeve appealingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Pondy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sahib, you tell me <i>now</i> where you learn Pondicherry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pondy, I told you the truth long ago," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Sahib, it is not possible."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away, and I went on board the tug which served us as a tender.
+Presently I saw him lean over the rail and wave his hand. When he saw
+that I noticed him he called out in French once more, with angry,
+scornful reproach,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If you were not there, how, <i>how</i> can you speak it?"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_GRADUATE_BEYOND_SEAS" id="A_GRADUATE_BEYOND_SEAS"></a>A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS</h2>
+
+<p>The travel-micrococcus infected me early. Before I can remember I
+travelled in England, and, when my memory begins, a stay of two years in
+any town made me weary. My brothers and sisters and I would then inquire
+what time the authorities meant to send my father elsewhere, and we were
+accustomed to denounce any delay on the part of a certain Government
+department in giving us "the route." Such a youth was gipsying, and if
+any original fever of the blood led to wandering, such a training
+heightened the tendency. To this day even, after painful and laborious
+travel, Fate cannot persuade me that my stakes should not be pulled up
+at intervals. I understand "trek fever," which, after all, is only
+Eldorado hunting. With the settler unsatisfied a belief in immortality
+takes its place.</p>
+
+<p>In the ferment of youth and childhood, which now threatens to quiet
+down, my feet stayed in many English towns and villages,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> from
+Barnstaple to Carlisle, from Bedford to Manchester, and I hated them all
+with fervour, only mitigating my wrath by great reading. I could only
+read at eight years of age, but from that time until eleven I read a
+mingled and most preposterous mass of literature and illiterature. It
+was a substitute for travel, and, in my case, not a substitute only, but
+a provoker. Reading is mostly dram-drinking, mostly drugging; it throws
+a veil over realities. With the child I knew best it urged him on and
+infected me with world-hunger and roused activities. To be sure the
+Elder Brethren, who are youth's first gaolers, nearly made me believe,
+by dint of repetition (they, themselves, probably believing it by now),
+that books and knowledge, which are acquired for, with, by and through
+examinations, were, of themselves, noble and admirable, and that an
+adequate acquaintance with them (provided such acquaintance could be
+proved adequate to Her Majesty's Commissioners of the Civil Service)
+would inevitably make a man of me. For the opinion is rooted deep in
+many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a
+cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard,
+is to be a very fine fowl indeed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>Some spirit of revolt saved the child (now a boy, I guess) from being a
+Civil Cochin China, and sent him to Australia. The ship in which I
+sailed for Melbourne was my first introduction to outside realities, to
+world realities as distinct from the preliminary brutalities of school,
+and it opened my eyes&mdash;indeed, gave me eyes instead of the substitutes
+for vision favoured by the Elder Brethren, who may be taken to include
+schoolmasters, professors, and good parents. How any child survives
+without losing his eyesight altogether is now a marvel to me. Certainly,
+very few retain more than a dim vision, which permits them to wallow
+amongst imitations (such as a last year's Chippendale morality) and
+imagine themselves well furnished. My new university (after Owens
+College an admirable hot-bed for some products under glass) was the
+<i>Hydrabad</i>, 1600 tons burden, with a mixed mass of passengers, mostly
+blackguards in the act of leaving England to allow things to blow over,
+and a Lascar crew, Hindoos, Seedee boys and Malays. The professors at
+this notable college were many, and all were fit for their unendowed
+chairs. They taught mostly, and in varying ways, the art of seeing
+things as they are, and if some saw things as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> were not, that is,
+double, the object lesson was eminently useful to the amazed scholar.
+Some of them pronounced me green, and I was green.</p>
+
+<p>But a four months' session and procession through the latitudes and
+longitudes brought me to Australia in a less obviously green condition.
+I had learnt the one big lesson that too few learn. I had to depend on
+myself. And Australia said, "You know nothing and must work." Had I not
+sat with Malays, and collogued with negroes, and eaten ancient shark
+with Hindoos? I was afraid of the big land where I could reckon on no
+biscuit tub always at hand, but these were men who had faced other
+continents and other seas. I could face realities, too, or I could try.</p>
+
+<p>It is the unnecessary work that gets the glory mostly, especially in a
+fat time of peace, but some day the scales will be held more level. A
+shearer of sheep will be held more honourable than a shearer of men; and
+he who shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked
+lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had
+their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more
+than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> more.
+But we live under the rule of Rabesqurat, Queen of Illusion.</p>
+
+<p>The Australian bush university, with the sun, moon and stars in the high
+places, and labour, hunger and thirst holding prominent lecturerships,
+helped to educate me. The proof of that education was that I know now
+that a big bit of my true life's work was done there. The preparation
+turned out to be the work itself. One does necessary things there, and
+they are done without glory and often without present satisfaction,
+except the satisfaction given to toil. What does the world want and must
+have? If all the theatres were put down and all the actors sent to
+useful work, things would be better instead of worse. If all the
+music-halls became drill-halls it would add to the world's health. If
+most of the writers concluded justly that they were in no way necessary
+or useful, some healthy man might be added to the list of workers and
+some unhealthy ones would find themselves better or very justly dead.
+But the sheep and cattle have to be attended to, and ships must be
+sailed, and bridges must be built. Hunger and thirst, and all the
+educational unrighteousness of the elements must be met, fought,
+out-marched or out-man&oelig;uvred. I went to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> school in the Murray Ranges,
+and carried salt to fluky sheep. Even if this present screed stirred me
+doubly to action, the salt-carrying was better. The sun and moon and
+stars overhead, and the big grey or brown plain beneath were for ever
+instilling knowledge that a city knows not. A city's soot kills elms,
+they say; only plane trees, self-scaling and self-cleaning, live and
+grow and survive. I think man is more like the elm; he cannot clean
+himself in a city.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been a question for me to solve, now youth exists no more,
+except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's
+own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in
+the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy
+exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the
+beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying
+the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies
+what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself or
+a few others.</p>
+
+<p>For America was my second great university, and though I lack any
+learned degree earned by examinations, and may put no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> letters after my
+name, I maintain I passed creditably, if without honours, in the hardest
+schools of the world. About a young man's first freedom still hangs some
+illusion. With apparently impregnable health and unsubdued spirits, he
+has the illusion of present immortality; life is a world without end.
+But when youth begins to sober and health shows cracks and gaps, and
+hard labour comes, then the realities, indeed, crawl out and show
+themselves. My early work in New South Wales seemed to me then like
+sport. America was real life; it was for ever putting the stiffest
+questions to me. I can imagine an examination paper which might appal
+many fat graduates.</p>
+
+<p>1. Describe from experience the sensations of hunger when prolonged over
+three days.</p>
+
+<p>2. Explain the differences in living in New York, Chicago and San
+Francisco on a dollar a week. In such cases, how would you spend ten
+cents if you found it in the street at three o'clock in the morning?</p>
+
+<p>3. How long would it be in your own case before want of food destroyed
+your sense of private property? Give examples from your own experience.</p>
+
+<p>4. How far can you walk without food&mdash;(<i>a</i>)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> when you are trying to
+reach a definite point; (<i>b</i>) when you are walking with an insane view
+of getting to some place unknown where a good job awaits you?</p>
+
+<p>5. If, after a period (say three weeks) of moderate starvation, and two
+days of absolute starvation, you are offered some work, which would be
+considered laborious by the most energetic coal-heaver, would you tackle
+it without food or risk the loss of the job by requesting your employer
+to advance you 15 cents for breakfast?</p>
+
+<p>6. Can you admire mountain scenery&mdash;(<i>a</i>) when you are very hungry;
+(<i>b</i>) when you are very thirsty? If you have any knowledge of the
+ascetic ecstasy, describe the symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>7. You are in South-west Texas without money and without friends. How
+would you get to Chicago in a fortnight? What is the usual procedure
+when a town objects to impecunious tramps staying around more than
+twenty-four hours? Can you describe a "calaboose"?</p>
+
+<p>8. Sketch an American policeman. Is he equally polite to a railroad
+magnate and a tramp? What do you understand by "fanning with a club"?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p><p>9. Which are the best as a whole diet&mdash;apples or water-melons?</p>
+
+<p>10. Define "tramp," "bummer," "heeler," "hoodlum," and "politician."</p>
+
+<p>This is a paper put together very casually, and just as the pen runs,
+but the man who can pass such an examination creditably must know many
+things not revealed to the babes and sucklings of civilisation. From my
+own point of view I think the questions fairly easy, a mere
+matriculation paper.</p>
+
+<p>When the Queen of Illusion illudes no more youth is over. I am ready to
+admit Illusion still reigned when I took to writing for a living. The
+first illusion was that I was not doing it for a living (it is true I
+did not make one) but because the arts were rather noble than otherwise
+and extremely needed. I admit now that they are necessary, in the sense
+of the necessarian, but I can see little use for them, unless the
+production of Illusion (with few or many gaps in it) is needed for the
+world's progress. The laudation of the artist, the writer, and the actor
+returns anew with the end of the world's great year. But if any golden
+age comes back, the setting apart of the Amusement Monger will cease. If
+it does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> cease, their antics will be the warnings of the intoxicated
+Helot.</p>
+
+<p>Yet without illusion one cannot write. Or so it seems to me. Is this
+writing period only another university after all? Perhaps teaching never
+ends, though the art of learning what is taught seems very rare. To
+write and "get there" in the meanest sense, so far as money is
+concerned, is the overcoming of innumerable obstacles. London taught me
+a great deal that I could not learn in Australia, or on the sea, or in
+any Texas, or British Columbia. But I came to London with scaled eyes,
+and tasted other poverty than that I knew. Illusion is mostly
+foreshortening of time. One wants to prophesy and to see. The chief
+lesson here is that prophets must be blind. The end of the race is the
+racing thereof after all. To do a little useful work (even though the
+useful may be a thousandth part of the useless) is the end of living.
+The only illusion worth keeping is that anything can be useful. So far
+my youth is not ended.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="MY_FRIEND_EL_TORO" id="MY_FRIEND_EL_TORO"></a>MY FRIEND EL TORO</h2>
+
+<p>It is not everyone who can make friends with a bull, and it is not every
+bull that one can make friends with. Yet next to one or two horses,
+about which I could spin long yarns, El Toro, the big brindled bull of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, is certainly nearest my
+heart. He was my friend, and sometimes my companion; he had a noble
+character for fighting, and in spite of his pugnacity he was amiability
+itself to most human beings. His final end, too, fills me with a sense
+of pathos, and enrages me against those who owned him. They were
+obviously incapable of understanding him as I did.</p>
+
+<p>When I went up to Los Guilucos from San Francisco to take up the
+position of stableman on that ranche, I had little notion of the full
+extent of my duties. What these were is perhaps irrelevant in the
+present connection. And yet it was because I had to work so incredibly
+hard, being often at it from six in the morning to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> eight or nine
+o'clock at night, that I made particular friends with El Toro, to give
+him his Spanish name. In all that western and south-western part of the
+United States there are remnants of Spanish or Mexican in the common
+talk. For California was once part of Mexico. El Toro became my friend
+and my refuge: when I was driven half-desperate by having ten important
+things to do at once he often came in and helped me to preserve an equal
+mind. I have little doubt that I should have discovered how to work this
+by myself, but as a matter of fact I was put up to some of his uses by
+the man whose place I took. He showed me all I had to do, and lectured
+me on the character of the hard-working lady who owned the place; and
+when I was dazed and stood wondering how one man could do all the
+stableman was supposed to accomplish between sunrise and sundown, Jack
+said, "And besides all this there is a bull!" He said it so oddly and so
+significantly that my heart sank. I imagined a very fierce and ferocious
+animal fit for a Spanish bull-ring, a sharp-horned Murcian good enough
+to try the nerve of the best matador who ever faced horns and a vicious
+charge. Then he took me round the barn and opened a stable. In it El
+Toro was tied to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> manger by a rope and ring through his nose: he
+greeted us with a strangled whistle as he still lay down. "When you are
+hard driven good old El Toro will help you," said Jack, as he sat down
+on the bull's big shoulders and started to scratch his curl with a
+little piece of wood which had a blunt nail in it. As I stood El Toro
+chewed the cud and was obviously delighted at having his curl combed.</p>
+
+<p>The departing Jack delivered me another lecture on the uses of a mild
+and amiable but fighting bull on a ranche where a man was likely to be
+worried to death by a lady who had no notion of how much a man ought to
+do in a day. When he had finished he invited me to make friends with El
+Toro by also sitting on his back and scratching him with the blunt nail.
+I did as I was told, and though El Toro twisted his huge head round to
+inspect me he lay otherwise perfectly calm while I went on with his
+toilet. He evidently felt that I was an amiable character, and one well
+adapted to act as his own man. His views of me were confirmed when I
+brought him half a bucket of pears from the big orchard. With a parting
+slap and a sigh of regret which spoke well both for him and the bull,
+Jack went away to "fix" himself for travel. I was left in charge.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p><p>How hard I worked on that Sonoma County ranch I can hardly say. I had
+horses in the stable and horses outside. The cattle outside were mine.
+Three hundred sheep I was responsible for. Some young motherless foals I
+nursed. I milked six cows. I chopped wood. I cleaned buggies. I drove
+wagons and carriages and cleaned and greased them. Sometimes I stood in
+the middle of the great barn-lot or barnyard and tore my hair in
+desperation. I had so much to attend to that only the strictest method
+enabled me to get through it. And, as Jack had told me would happen, my
+method was knocked endways by the requirements of the lady who was my
+"boss." What a woman wants done is always the most important thing on
+earth. She used to ask me to do up her acre of a garden in between times
+when the sheep wanted water or twenty horses required hay. She was
+amiable, kindly, but she never understood. At such times who could blame
+me if I went to the bull's stable when I saw her coming. Though the bull
+was the sweetest character on the ranch, she went in mortal terror of
+him. She would try to find me in the horse stable, but she would not
+come near El Toro for her very life. It was better to sit quietly with
+him and recover my equanimity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> while she called. I knew her well enough
+to know that in a quarter of an hour something else of the vastest
+importance would engage her attention and I should be free to attend
+more coolly to my own work.</p>
+
+<p>Yet sometimes she stuck to my track so closely that there was nothing
+for me to do but to turn El Toro loose. Then I could say, "Very well,
+madam, but in the meantime I must go after the bull." She knew what the
+bull being loose meant; he carried devastation wherever he went. He was
+the greatest fighter in the whole county. I had to get my whip and my
+fastest horse to try and catch him. I can hardly be blamed if I did not
+catch him till the evening. For in that way I got a wild kind of holiday
+on horseback and was saved from insanity. Certainly, when El Toro got
+away on the loose and was looking for other bulls to have a row with I
+could think of nothing else. Sometimes he got free by the rope rotting
+close up to his ring. In that case he went headlong. If he took the rope
+with him he sometimes trod on it and gave himself a nasty check.
+Usually, however, he got it across his big neck and kept it from falling
+to the ground. He never stopped for any gate. When he saw one he gave a
+bellow, charged it and went through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> fragments with me after him. If
+I was really anxious to get him back at once I usually caught him within
+a mile. When I wanted a rest I only succeeded in turning him five or six
+miles away, after he had thrashed a bull or two belonging to other
+ranchers. No fence was any use to keep him out or in. On one occasion he
+broke into a barn in which a rash young bull was kept. When the row was
+over that barn stood sadly in need of repair: and so did the young
+pedigree bull. I may say that on this particular occasion El Toro got
+away entirely by himself, and I only knew he was free when I found the
+door of his stable in splinters.</p>
+
+<p>There was a magnificent difference between El Toro as I sat on him and
+scratched him with a nail and as he was when he turned himself loose for
+a happy day in the country. In the stable he was as mild as milk. I
+could have almost imagined him purring like a cat. He chewed the cud and
+made homely sloppy noises with his tongue, and regarded me with a calm,
+bovine gaze, which was as gentle as that of any pet cow's. I could have
+fallen asleep beside him. It is reported that my predecessor Jack, on
+one occasion, came home much the worse for liquor and was found
+reclining on El Toro. There was not a soul on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the ranch who dared
+disturb the loving couple. But when the rope was parted and El Toro
+loped down the road to seek a row as keenly as any Irishman on a fair
+day, he was another guess sort of an animal. He carried his tail in the
+air and bellowed wildly to the hills. He threw out challenges to all and
+sundry. He gave it to be understood that the world and the fatness
+thereof were his. This was no mere braggadocio; it was not the misplaced
+confidence of a stall-fed bull in his mere weight; he really could
+fight, and though he was only on the warpath about once a month, there
+was not a bull in the valley which had not retained in his thick skull
+and muddy brains some recollection of El Toro's prowess. The only
+trouble about this, from my pet bull's point of view, was that he could
+rarely get up a row. Most of his possible enemies fled when he tooted
+his horn and waltzed into the arena through a smashed fence. He was
+magnificent and he was war incarnate.</p>
+
+<p>In that country, which is a hard-working country, there is really very
+little sport. Further south in California, the ease-loving Spanish
+people who remain among the Americans still love music and the dance. We
+worked, and worked hard; only Sundays brought us a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> surcease from
+toil. All our notions of sport centred on our bull. I had many Italian
+co-workers, some Swedes, and an odd citizen of the United States. All
+alike agreed in being proud of El Toro. We yearned to match him against
+any bull in the State. Sometimes of a Sunday morning, after he had
+devastated the country and was back again, he held a kind of <i>lev&eacute;e</i>.
+The Italians brought him pears as I sat on him in triumph and combed him
+in places where he had not been wounded. He always forgot that I had
+come behind him and laced his tough hide with my stock-whip. He bore no
+malice, but took his fruit like a good child. I think he was almost as
+proud of himself as we were. Certainly we were proud of him. As for me,
+had I not ridden desperate miles after him: had I not interviewed
+outraged owners of other bulls and broken fences: had I not played the
+diplomat or the bully according to the treatment which seemed indicated?
+He was, properly speaking, my bull; I did not care if I had to spend
+three days mending our home gates and other's alien fences.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was a fine thing to gallop through that warm, bright,
+Californian air after El Toro, with the brown hills on either side and
+its patches of green vineyard brightening daily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> It was freedom after
+the toil of axle-greasing and the slow work with sheep. It was better
+than grinding axes and trying to cut the tough knobs of vine stumps:
+better than grooming horses and milking cows. It made me think even more
+of the great Australian plains and of the Texas prairie and the round
+up. <i>Ay de mi</i>, I remember it now, sometimes, and I wish I was on
+horseback, swinging my whip and uttering diabolic yells, significant of
+the freedom of the spirit as I rush after the spirit of El Toro. For my
+pet, my brindled fighter, my own El Toro, whom I combed so delicately
+with a bent nail, for whom I gathered buckets of bruised but fat
+Californian pears, is now no more. They told me, when I visited Los
+Guilucos seven years ago, that he became difficult, morose, hard to
+handle, and they sold him. They sold this joyous incarnation of the
+spirit of battle and the pure joy of life for a mean and miserable
+thirteen dollars! When I think of it I almost fall to tears. So might
+some coward son of the seas sell a battleship for ten pounds because it
+was not suitable for a ferry-boat or a river yacht. I would rather a
+thousand times have paid the thirteen dollars myself and have taken him
+out to fight his last Armageddon and then have shot him on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> lonely
+hills from which all other bulls had fled. These mean-souled,
+conscienceless moneymakers, who could not understand so brave, so fine a
+spirit, sold him to a Santa Rosa butcher! Shame on them, I say. I am
+sorry I ever revisited the Valley of the Seven Moons to hear such
+lamentable news. It made me unhappy then, makes me unhappy now. My only
+consolation is that once, and twice, and thrice, and yet again, I gave
+El Toro the chance of finding happiness in the conflict. And when I left
+Los Guilucos, before I returned to England, I sat upon his huge
+shoulders and scratched him most thoroughly, while ever and again I
+offered him a juicy and unbruised pear. On that occasion I pulled him
+the best fruit, and left windfalls for the ranging, greedy hogs. And as
+I fed and scratched him he lay on his hunkers in great content, and made
+pleasant noises as he remembered the day before. On that day, owing to
+the kindly feeling of me, his true and real friend, he had had a great
+time three miles towards Glenallen, and had beaten a newly-imported bull
+out of all sense of self-importance. He was pleased with himself,
+pleased with me, pleased with the world.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BOOKS_IN_THE_GREAT_WEST" id="BOOKS_IN_THE_GREAT_WEST"></a>BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST</h2>
+
+<p>Since taking to writing as a profession I have lost most of the interest
+I had in literature as literature pure and simple. That interest
+gradually faded and "Art for Art's sake," in the sense the simple in
+studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very
+rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual
+about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them
+betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is
+nothing, what they say is everything. So on the shelf to which I mostly
+resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little
+work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's
+Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental Bradshaw; many
+Baedekers; a Directory to the Indian Ocean and the China Seas; a big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+folding map of the United States; some books dealing with strategy, and
+some touching on medical knowledge, but principally pathology, and
+especially the pathology of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in spite of this utilitarian bent of my thoughts there are very many
+books I know and love and sometimes look into because of their
+associations. As I cannot understand (through some mental kink which my
+friends are wont to jeer at) how anyone can return again and again to a
+book for its own sake, I do not read what I know. As soon would I go
+back when it is my purpose to go forward. A book should serve its turn,
+do its work, and become a memory. To love books for their own sake is to
+be crystallised before old age comes on. Only the old are entitled to
+love the past. The work of the young lies in the present and the future.</p>
+
+<p>But still, in spite of my theories, I like to handle, if not to read,
+certain books which were read by me under curious and perhaps abnormal
+circumstances. If I do not open them it is due to a certain bashfulness,
+a subtle dislike of seeing myself as I was. Yet the books I read while
+tramping in America, such as <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, have the same attraction
+for me that a man may feel for a place. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> carried the lucubrations of
+Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh with me as I wandered; I read them as I camped in the open
+upon the prairie; I slipped them into my pocket when I went shepherding
+in the Texan plateau south of the Panhandle.</p>
+
+<p>Another book which went with me on my tramps through Minnesota and Iowa
+was a tiny volume of Emerson's essays. This I loved less than I loved
+Carlyle, and I gave it to a railroad "section boss" in the north-west of
+Iowa because he was kind to me. When <i>Sartor Resartus</i> had travelled
+with me through the Kicking Horse Pass and over the Selkirks into
+British Columbia, and was sucked dry, I gave it at last to a farming
+Englishman who lived not far from Kamloops. I remember that in the
+flyleaf I kept a rough diary of the terrible week I spent in climbing
+through the Selkirk Range with sore and wounded feet. It is perhaps
+little wonder that I associate Teufelsdr&ouml;ckh, the mind-wanderer, with
+those days of my own life. And yet, unless I live to be old, I shall
+never read the book again.</p>
+
+<p>The tramp, or traveller, or beach-comber, or general scallywag finds
+little time and little chance to read. And for the most part we must own
+he cares little for literature in any form. But I was not always
+wandering. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> varied wandering with work, and while working at a sawmill
+on the coast, or close to it, in the lower Fraser River in British
+Columbia, I read much. In the town of New Westminster was a little
+public library, and I used to go thither after work if I was not too
+tired. But the work in a sawmill is very arduous to everyone in it, and
+while the winter kept away I had little energy to read. Presently,
+however, the season changed, and the bitter east winds came out of the
+mountains and fixed the river in ice and froze up our logs in the
+"boom," so that the saws were at last silent, and I was free to plunge
+among the books and roll and soak among them day and night.</p>
+
+<p>The library was very much mixed. It was indeed created upon a pile of
+miscellaneous matter left by British troops when they were stationed on
+the British Columbian mainland. There was much rubbish on the shelves,
+but among the rubbish I found many good books. For instance, that winter
+I read solidly through Gibbon's <i>Rome</i>, and refreshed my early memories
+of Mahomet, of Alaric, and of Attila. Those who imported fresh elements
+into the old were even then my greatest interest. I preferred the
+destroyers to the destroyed, being rather on the side of the gods than
+on the side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> of Cato. Lately, as I was returning from South Africa, I
+tried to read Gibbon once more, and I failed. He was too classic, too
+stately. I fell back on Froude, and was refreshed by the manner, if not
+always delighted by the matter.</p>
+
+<p>After emerging from the Imperial flood at the last chapter, I fell
+headlong into Vasari's <i>Lives of the Painters</i>, in nine volumes. Then I
+read Motley's <i>Netherlands</i> and the <i>Rise of the Dutch Republic</i>, always
+terrible and picturesque since I had read it as a boy of eleven.</p>
+
+<p>At the sawmill there was but one man with whom I could talk on any
+matters of intellectual interest. He was a big man from Michigan and ran
+the shingle saw. We often discussed what I had lately read, and went
+away from discussion to argument concerning philosophy and theology. He
+was a most lovable person; as keen as a sharpened sawtooth, and a
+polemic but courteous atheist. His greatest sorrow in life was that his
+mother, a Middle State woman of ferocious religion, could not be kept in
+ignorance of his principles. We argued ethics sophistically as to
+whether a convinced agnostic might on occasion hide what he believed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>Sometimes this friend of mine went to the library with me. He had the
+<i>penchant</i> for science so common among the finer rising types of the
+lower classes. So I read Darwin's <i>Origin of Species</i>, and talked of it
+with my Michigan man. And then I took to Savage Landor and learnt some
+of his <i>Imaginary Conversations</i> by heart. I could have repeated <i>&AElig;sop</i>
+and <i>Rhodope</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But the one thing I for ever fell back upon was an old encyclop&aelig;dia. I
+should be afraid to say how much I read, but to it I owe, doubtless, a
+stock of extensive, if shallow, general knowledge. Certainly it appears
+to have influenced me to this day; for given a similar one I can wander
+from shipbuilding to St. Thomas Aquinas; from the Atomic Theory to the
+Marquis de Sade; from Kant to the building of dams; and never feel dull.</p>
+
+<p>Now when I come across any of these books I am filled with a curious
+melancholy. The <i>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i> means more to me
+than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its
+driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's <i>Human
+Understanding</i> recalls things no man can understand if he has not
+worked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, I never
+hear him mentioned without seeing the mountains and glaciers of the
+Selkirks; in his pages is the sound of the wind and rain.</p>
+
+<p>There are some novels, too, which have attractions not all their own. I
+remember once walking into a store at Eagle Pass Landing on the Shushwap
+Lake and asking for a book. I was referred to a counter covered with
+bearskins, and beneath the hides I unearthed a pile of novels. The one I
+took was Thomas Hardy's <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>. And another time I
+rode into Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and, while buying
+stores, saw Gissing's <i>Demos</i> open in front of me. It was anonymous, but
+I knew it for his, and I read it as I rode slowly homeward down the
+Sonoma Valley, the Valley of the Seven Moons.</p>
+
+<p>These are but a few of the books that are burnt into one's memory as by
+fire. All I remember are not literature: perhaps I should reject many
+with scorn at the present day; nevertheless, they have a value to me
+greater than the price set upon many precious folios. I propose one of
+these days to make a shelf among my shelves sacred to the books which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> I
+read under curious circumstances. I cannot but regret that I often had
+nothing to read at the most interesting times. So far as I can
+recollect, I got through five days' starvation in Australia without as
+much as a newspaper.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_VISIT_TO_R_L_STEVENSON" id="A_VISIT_TO_R_L_STEVENSON"></a>A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON</h2>
+
+<p>It was late in May or early in June, for I cannot now remember the exact
+date, that I landed in Apia, in the island of Upolu. Naturally enough
+that island was not to me so much the centre of Anglo-American and
+German rivalries as the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, then become the
+literary deity of the Pacific. In a dozen shops in Honolulu I had seen
+little plaster busts of him; here and there I came across his
+photograph. And I had a theory about him to put to the test. Though I
+was not, and am not, one of those who rage against over-great praise,
+when there is any true foundation for it, I had never been able to
+understand the laudation of which he was the subject. At that time, and
+until the fragment of <i>Weir of Hermiston</i> was given to the world,
+nothing but his one short<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> story about the thief and poet, Villon, had
+seemed to me to be really great, really to command or even to be an
+excuse for his being in the position in which his critics had placed
+him. Yet I had read <i>The Wrecker</i>, <i>The Ebb Tide</i>, <i>The Beach of
+Falesa</i>, <i>Kidnapped</i>, <i>Catriona</i>, <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>, and the
+<i>New Arabian Nights</i>. I came to the conclusion that, as most of the
+organic chorus of approval came from men who knew him, he must be (as
+all writers, I think, should be) immeasurably greater than his books. I
+was prepared then for a personality, and I found it. When his name is
+mentioned I no longer think of any of his works, but of a sweet-eyed,
+thin, brown ghost of a man whom I first saw upon horseback in a grove of
+cocoanut palms by the sounding surges of a tropic sea. There are
+writers, and not a few of them, whose work it is a pleasure to read,
+while it is a pain to know them, a disappointment, almost an
+unhappiness, to be in their disillusioning company. They have given the
+best to the world. Robert Louis Stevenson never gave his best, for his
+best was himself.</p>
+
+<p>At any time of the year the Navigator Islands are truly tropical, and
+whether the sun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> inclines towards Cancer or Capricorn, Apia is a bath of
+warm heat. As soon as the <i>Monowai</i> dropped her anchor inside the
+opening of the reef that forms the only decent harbour in all the group,
+I went ashore in haste. Our time was short, but three or four hours, and
+I could afford neither the time nor the money to stay there till the
+next steamer. I had much to do in Australia, and was not a little
+exercised in mind as to how I should ever be able to get round the world
+at all unless I once more shipped before the mast. I was, in fact, so
+hard put to it in the matter of cash, that when the hotel-keeper asked
+three dollars for a pony on which to ride to Vailima, I refused to pay
+it, and went away believing that after all I should not see him whom I
+most desired to meet. Yet it was possible, if not likely, that he would
+come down to visit the one fortnightly link with the great world from
+which he was an exile. I had to trust to chance, and in the meantime
+walked the long street of Apia and viewed the Samoans, whom he so loved,
+with vivid interest. These people, riven and torn by internal
+dissensions between Mataafa and Malietoa, and honeycombed by
+Anglo-American and German intrigue, were the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> interesting and the
+noblest that I had met since I foregathered for a time with a wandering
+band of Blackfeet Indians close to Calgary beneath the shadows of the
+Rocky Mountains. Their dress, their customs, and their free and noble
+carriage, yet unspoiled by civilisation, appealed to me greatly. I could
+understand as I saw them walk how Stevenson delighted in them. Man and
+woman alike looked me and the whole world in the face, and went by,
+proud, yet modest, and with the smile of a happy, unconquered race.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked with half a dozen curious indifferents whom the hazards of
+travel had made my companions, we turned from the main road into the
+seclusion of a shaded group of palms, and as I went I saw coming towards
+me a mounted white man behind whom rode a native. As he came nearer I
+looked at him without curiosity, for, as the time passed, I was becoming
+reconciled by all there was to see to the fact that I might not meet
+this exiled Scot. And yet, as he neared and passed me, I knew that I
+knew him, that he was familiar; and very presently I was aware that this
+sense of familiarity was not, as so often happens to a traveller, the
+awakened memory of a type. This was an individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> and a personality. I
+stopped and stared after him, and suddenly roused myself. Surely this
+was Robert Louis Stevenson, and this his man. So might the ghosts of
+Crusoe and Friday pass one on the shore of Juan Fernandez.</p>
+
+<p>I called the "boy" and gave him my card, and asked him to overtake his
+master. In another moment my literary apparition, this chief among the
+Samoans, was shaking hands with me. He alighted from his horse, and we
+walked together towards the town. I fell a victim to him, and forgot
+that he wrote. His writings were what packed dates might be to one who
+sat for the first time under a palm in some far o&auml;sis; they were but ice
+in a tumbler compared with s&eacute;racs. He was first a man, and then a
+writer. The pitiful opposite is too common.</p>
+
+<p>I think, indeed I am sure, for I know he could not lie, that he was
+pleased to see me. What I represented to him then I hardly reckoned at
+the time, but I was a messenger from the great world of men; I moved
+close to the heart of things; I was fresh from San Francisco, from New
+York, from London. He spoke like an exile, but one not discouraged.
+Though his physique was of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> frailest (I had noted with astonishment
+that his thigh as he sat on horseback was hardly thicker than my
+forearm), he was alert and gently eager. That soft, brown eye which held
+me was full of humour, of pathos, of tenderness, yet I could imagine it
+capable of indignation and of power. It might be that his body was
+dying, but his mind was young, elastic, and unspoiled by selfishness or
+affectation. He had his regrets; they concerned the Samoans greatly.</p>
+
+<p>"Had I come here fifteen years ago I might have ruled these islands."</p>
+
+<p>He imagined it possible that international intrigue might not have
+flourished under him. Never had I seen so fragile a man who would be
+king. He owned, with a shyly comic glance, that he had leanings towards
+buccaneering. The man of action, were he but some shaggy-bearded
+shellback, appealed to him. His own physique was his apology for being
+merely a writer of novels.</p>
+
+<p>We went on board the steamer, and at his request I bade a steward show
+his faithful henchman over her. In the meantime we sat in the saloon and
+drank "soft" drinks. It pleased him to talk, and he spoke fluently in a
+voice that was musical. He touched a hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> subjects; he developed a
+theory of matriarchy. Men loved to steal; women were naturally
+receivers. They adored property; their minds ran on possession; they
+were domestic materialists. We talked of socialism, of Bully Hayes, of
+Royat, of Rudyard Kipling. He regretted greatly not having seen the
+author of <i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"He was once coming here. Even now I believe there is mail-matter of his
+rotting at the post-office."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him to accept a book I had brought from England, hoping to be
+able to give it to him. It was the only book of mine that I thought
+worthy of his acceptance. That he knew it pleased me. But he always
+desired to please, and pleased without any effort. When the boy came
+back from viewing the internal arrangements of the <i>Monowai</i>, he sat
+down with us as a free warrior. He was more a friend than a servant;
+Stevenson treated him as the head of a clan in his old home might treat
+a worthy follower. As there was yet an hour before the vessel sailed I
+went on shore with him again. We were rowed there by a Samoan in a
+waistcloth. His head was whitened by the lime which many of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> natives
+use to bleach their dark locks to a fashionable red.</p>
+
+<p>The air was hot and the sea glittered under an intense sun. The rollers
+from the roadstead broke upon the reef. The outer ocean was a very
+wonderful tropic blue; inside the reefs the water was calmer, greener,
+more unlike anything that can be seen in northern latitudes. A little
+island inside the lagoon glared with red rock in the sunlight; cocoanut
+palms adorned it gracefully; beyond again was the deeper blue of ocean;
+the island itself, a mass of foliage, melted beautifully into the lucid
+atmosphere. Yonder, said Stevenson, lay Vailima that I was not to see.
+But I had seen the island and the man, and the natural colour and glory
+of both.</p>
+
+<p>As we went ashore he handed the book which I had given him to his
+follower. He thought it necessary to explain to me that etiquette
+demanded that no chief should carry anything. And etiquette was rigid
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs Grundy," he remarked, "is essentially a savage institution."</p>
+
+<p>We went together to the post-office. And in the street outside, while
+many passed and greeted "Tusitala" in the soft, native<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> speech, we
+parted. I saw him ride away, and saw him wave his hand to me as he
+turned once more into the dark grove wherein I had met him in the year
+of his death.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_DAY_IN_CAPETOWN" id="A_DAY_IN_CAPETOWN"></a>A DAY IN CAPETOWN</h2>
+
+<p>I went across the Parade, which every morning is full of cheap-jack
+auctioneers selling all things under the sun to Kaffirs, Malays,
+coolies, towards Rondebosch and Wynberg. At the Castle the electric tram
+passed me, and I jumped on board and went, at the least, as fast as an
+English slow train. The wind was blowing and the dust flew, but ahead of
+us ran a huge electricity-driven water-cart, a very water tram, which
+laid the red clouds for us. Yet in London we travel painfully in
+omnibuses and horse-trams, and the rare water-cart is still drawn by
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>The road towards Rondebosch, where Mr Rhodes lived, is full of interest.
+It reminded me dimly of a road in Ceylon: the colour of it was so red,
+and the reddish tree trunks and heavy foliage were almost tropical in
+character. Many of the houses are no more than one-storey bungalows;
+half the folks one saw were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> coloured; a rare Malay woman flaunted
+colour like a tropic bird. Avenues of pines resembled huge scrub; they
+cast strong shadows even in the greyness of the day. Far above the huge
+ramparts of Table Mountain lay the clouds, and the wind whistled
+mournfully from the organ pipes of the Devil's Peak. In unoccupied lands
+were great patches of wild arum, and suddenly I saw the gaunt Australian
+blue gum, which flourishes here just as well as the English oak. Two
+white gums shone among sombrest pines. They took my mind suddenly back
+to the bush of the Murray Hills, for there they gleam like sunlit
+lighthouses among the darker and more melancholy timber of the heights.</p>
+
+<p>The houses grew fewer and fewer beyond Rondebosch, and at last we came
+to Wynberg, a quiet little suburban town. The tram ran through and
+beyond it, and I got off and walked for a while among the side roads.
+And the aspect of the country was so quiet, and yet so rich, that I
+wondered how any could throw doubts upon the wonderful value of the
+country. Surely this was a spot worth fighting for, and, more certainly
+still, it was a place for peace. A long contemplative walk brought me
+back to Rondebosch, and again I took the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> train-like tram and went back
+to busy Capetown.</p>
+
+<p>In any new town the heights about and above it appeal strongly to every
+wanderer. I had no time to spare for the ascent of Table Mountain, and
+the tablecloth of clouds indeed forbade me to attempt it. But someone
+had spoken to me of the Kloof road, which leads to the saddleback
+between the Lion's Head and Table Mountain, so, taking the Kloof Street
+tram, I ran with it to its stopping-place and found the road. There the
+houses are more scattered; the streets are thin. But about every house
+is foliage; in every garden are flowers. As I mounted the steep,
+well-kept road I came upon pine woods. Across the valley, or the Kloof,
+I saw the lower grassy slopes of Table Mountain, where the trees
+dwindled till they dotted the hill-side like spare scrub. Above the
+trees is a cut in the mountain, above that the bare grass, and then the
+frowning weather-worn bastions of the mountain with its ancient
+horizontal strata. It is cut and scarped into gullies and chimneys; for
+the mountain climber it offers difficult and impossible climbs at every
+point. Down the upper gullies hung wisps of ragged cloud, pouring over
+from the plateau 4000 feet above the town.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>On the left of the true Table Mountain there is a rugged and ragged
+dip, and further still the rocks rise again in the sharper pinnacles of
+the Devil's Peak. That slopes away till it runs down into the
+house-dotted Cape flats, and beyond it lie Rondebosch, Wynberg and
+Constantia. Across the grey and misty flats other mountains
+rise&mdash;mountains of a strange shape which suggests a peculiar and unusual
+geological formation.</p>
+
+<p>Although the day was cool and the southerly wind had a biting quality
+about it, yet the whole aspect of the world about me was intensely
+sub-tropical. In heavy sunlight it would seem part of the countries
+north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The close-set trees, seen from above,
+appear like scrub, like close-set ti-tree. They are massed at the top,
+and among them lie white houses. Beyond them the lower slopes of the
+Devil's Peak are yellow and red sand, but the grey-green waters of the
+bay, which is shaped like a great hyperbola, are edged with white sand.</p>
+
+<p>Among the pines the rhythmic wind rose and fell; it whistled and wailed
+and died away. Beneath me came the faint sound of men calling; there was
+the clink of hammers upon stone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p><p>But suddenly the town was lost among the trees, and when I sat down at
+last upon a seat I might have been among the woods above the Castle of
+Chillon, and, seen dimly among the foliage, the heights yonder could
+have been taken for the slopes of Arvel or Sonchaud. A bird whistled a
+short, repeated, melancholy song, and suddenly I remembered I had seen
+no sparrows here. A blackcap stared at me and fled; its triple note was
+repeated from bush to bush.</p>
+
+<p>The wind rose again as I sat, but did not chill me in my sheltered
+hollow. It rose and fell in wavelike rhythm like the far thunder of
+waves upon a rock-bound coast. Then came silence, and again the wind was
+like the sound of a distant waterfall. There for one moment I caught the
+resinous smell of pine. It drew me back to the Rocky Mountains, and then
+to the woods above Zermatt, where I had last smelt that healthiest and
+most pleasing of woodland odours. I rose again and walked on.</p>
+
+<p>Presently I gained a loftier height, and saw the Lion's Head above me, a
+bold shield knob of rock rising out of silver trees, whose foliage is a
+pale glaucous green, resembling that of young eucalypti. Then, turning,
+I saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Capetown spread out beneath me, almost as one sees greater Naples
+from the Belvedere of the San Martino monastery. The whitish-grey town
+is furrowed into ca&ntilde;on-like streets. Beyond the town and over the flats
+was a view like that from Camaldoli. The foreground was scrub and pine
+and deep red earth, whereon men were building a new house. May fate send
+me here again when the sun is hot and the under world is all aglow!</p>
+
+<p>I came at last to the little wind-swept divide between Table Mountain
+and the Lion's Head. Here Capetown was lost to me, and I stood among
+sandy wastes where thin pines and whin-like bushes grow. And further
+still was the cold grey sea with the waves breaking on a rocky point and
+a little island all awash with white water.</p>
+
+<p>Though beyond this divide the air was cold as death, the slopes of Table
+Mountain sweeping to the sea were full of colour; deep, strong, stern
+colour. When the sun shines and full summer rules upon the Cape
+Peninsula the place must be glorious. Even when I saw it an artist would
+wonder how it was that with such a chill wind the colour remained. And
+above the coloured lower slopes this new view of Table Mountain
+suggested a serried rank of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> sphinxes staring out across the desert sea.
+The nearest peak of the mountain is weathered, cracked and scarred, and
+it in are two chimneys that appear accessible only for the oreads who
+block the way with their smoky clouds. In the far north-eastern distance
+the grey headlands melted into the grey ocean. But beneath me were the
+tender green of the birch-like silver tree and the rich young leaves of
+the transplanted English oak.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VELDT_PLAIN_AND_PRAIRIE" id="VELDT_PLAIN_AND_PRAIRIE"></a>VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE</h2>
+
+<p>Among the problems which remain perpetually interesting are those which
+deal with the influence of environment on races, and that of races on
+environment. What happens when the people are plastic and their
+circumstances rigid? What when the people are rigid and unyielding, and
+their surroundings fluent and unabiding? And does character depend on
+what is outside, or does the dominant quality of a race remain, as some
+vainly think, for ever? These are puzzling questions, but not entirely
+beyond conjecture for one who has heard the siren songs of the African
+veldt, the Australian plain, and the American prairie.</p>
+
+<p>He who consciously observes usually observes the obvious, and may rank
+as a discoverer only among the unobservant. Truth may be looked for, but
+he who hunts her shall rarely find when the truth he seeks is something
+not suited for scientific formul&aelig;. The real observer is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> he who does not
+observe, but is gradually aware that he knows. Sometimes he does not
+learn that he is wise till long years have passed, and then perhaps the
+mechanical maxim of a mechanical eye-server of Nature shall startle him
+into a sense of deep abiding, but perhaps incommunicable, knowledge. So
+comes the knowledge of mountain, moor and stream; so rises the Aphrodite
+truth of the sea, born from the foam that surges round the Horn, or
+floats silently upon the beach of some lonely coral island; and so grows
+the knowledge of vast stretches of dim inland continents.</p>
+
+<p>I spent my hours (let them be called months) in Africa seeking vainly
+after facts that after all were of no importance. Politics are of
+to-day, but human nature is of eternity. And while I sought what I could
+hardly find, in one cold clear dawn I stumbled upon the truth concerning
+the white people of the veldt, whom we call Boers. And yet it was not
+stumbling; I had but rediscovered something that I had known of old in
+other lands, far east and far west of Africa. When first I entered on
+the terraces of the Karroo I tried to build up for myself the character
+of the lone horsemen who ride across these spaces, and though I was
+solitary, and saw sunrises, the construction of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> the type eluded me. I
+saw the big plain and the flat-topped banded hills that had sunk into
+their minds. I saw the ruddy dawn glow, and the ruddier glory of sundown
+as the sun bit into the edge of the horizon, and I knew that here
+somewhere lay the secret of the race, even though I could not find it.
+And I knew too that I had discovered sister secrets in long past days;
+and I saw that, not in the intellect as one knows it, but in some
+revived instinct, revived it might be by one of the senses, lay the clue
+to what I sought. What did these people think, or what lay beneath
+thought in them? It was something akin to what I had felt somewhere,
+that I knew. But the sun went down and left me in the dark; or it rose
+clear of the distant hills and drowned me in daylight, and still I did
+not know. Then there was the babble of politics in my ears, and I spoke
+of Reform and such urgent matters in the dusty streets of windy
+Johannesburg.</p>
+
+<p>But one day, as it chanced, I came upon the secret; and then I found it
+was incommunicable, as all real secrets are. For your true secret is an
+informing sensation, and no sensation can resolve itself other than by
+negatives. I had spent a weary, an unutterably weary, day in a coach
+upon the Transvaal uplands,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> and came in the dark to the house of a Boer
+who served travellers with unspeakable food and gave them such
+accommodation as might be. It was midnight when I arrived, and all his
+beds were full of those who were journeying in the opposite direction.
+He made me a couch on the floor in a kind of lumber-room, and, softened
+child of civilisation that I had become, I growled by myself at what he
+gave, and wondered what, in the name of the devil who wanders over the
+earth, I was doing there. And how could he endure it? How, indeed. I
+fell asleep, and the next minute, which was six hours later, I awoke,
+and stumbled with a dusty mouth into the remaining night, not yet become
+dawn. Such an hour seemed unpropitious. My bones ached; I lamented my
+ancient hardness in the time when a board or a sheet of stringy bark was
+soft; I felt a touch of fever, my throat was dry, a hard hot day of
+discomfort was before me. In the dim dusk I saw the mules gathered by
+the coach, which had yet to do sixty miles. A bucket invited me; I
+washed my hot hands and face, and walked away from the buildings into
+the open. Then very suddenly and without any warning I understood why
+the Boer existed, and why, in his absurd perversity, he rather
+preferred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> existing as he was; and I saw that even I, like other
+Englishmen, could be subdued to the veldt. The air was crisp and chill;
+the dawn began to break in a pale olive band in the lower east; the
+stars were bright overhead; the morning star was even yet resplendent.
+But these things I had seen on the southern Karroo. It was not my eyes
+alone that told me the old secret, the same old secret that I had known.
+I knew then, and at once, as an infinite peace poured over me, that all
+my senses were required to bring me back to nature, and that one alone
+was helpless. Now with what I saw came what I heard. I heard the clatter
+of harness, the jingle of a bell, the low of a cow, the trampling of the
+mules. And I smelt with rapture, with delight, the complex odours of the
+farm that sat so solitary in the world; but above all the chill moving
+odour of the great plain itself. This, or these, made a strange,
+primitive pleasure that I had known in Australia, in Texas, even in a
+farm upon the edge of a wild Westmorland moor. My senses informed my
+intellect. I shook hands with the creatures of the veldt, for I was of
+their tribe. Even my feet trod the earth pounded by the mules, the
+horses and the oxen, with a sensation that was new and old.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Why did not
+spurs jingle on my heels? I felt strong and once more a man. So feels
+the Boer, and so does he love, but he cannot even try to communicate the
+incommunicable. For, after all, the secret is like the smell of a flower
+that few have seen. Its odour is not the odour of the rose, not that of
+any lily, not that of any herb; it is its own odour only.</p>
+
+<p>What is the difference, then, in those who ride the high Texan plateaux
+or scour the sage-bush plains of Nevada, or follow sheep or cattle in
+the salt bush country of the lingering Lachlan? There is much
+difference; there is little difference; there is no difference. The
+great difference is racial, the small difference is human, the lack of
+any difference is animal and prim&aelig;val. In all alike, in any country
+where spaces are wide, the child that was the ancestor of the man arises
+with its truthful unconscious curiosity and faith in Nature. Here it may
+be that one gallops, here one trots, here again one walks. But all alike
+pull the bridle and snuff the air and find it good, and see the grass
+grow or dwindle, and watch the stars and the passing seasons, and find
+the world very fresh and very sweet and very simple.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="NEAR_MAFEKING" id="NEAR_MAFEKING"></a>NEAR MAFEKING</h2>
+
+<p>To a man who has lived and travelled in the United States of America and
+the not yet United States of Australia, there is one characteristic of
+South Africa which is particularly noticeable. It is its oneness as a
+country. And this oneness is all the more remarkable when we take into
+consideration its racial and political divisions. A bird's-eye view of
+America is beyond one; a similar glance at the seaboard of Australia
+from Rockhampton even round to Albany (which is then only round half its
+circle) gives me a mental crick in the neck. But in thinking of Africa,
+south of the Zambesi, there is no such mental difficulty. Even the
+existence of the Transvaal seemed to me an accident, and, if inevitable,
+one which Nature herself protests against. Some day South Africa must be
+federated, but if any politician asks me, "Under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> which king, Bezonian,
+speak or die," I shall elect (in these pages at least) to die.</p>
+
+<p>But though this disunited unity seemed to me a salient feature in
+cis-Zambesian Africa, it was the differences in that natural ring fence
+which attracted most of my attention as a story-writer even as a
+story-writer who so far has only written one tale about it. I began to
+ask myself how it was that, with one eminent exception, our African
+fiction writers had confined themselves to the native races, and the
+friction between these races and white men, Boer or English, when there
+were infinitely more attractive themes at hand. Perhaps it may seem like
+begging the question to call the political inter-play of the Cape
+Colony, of the Transvaal, and the Free State more interesting than tales
+in which the highest "white" interest appears in a love story betwixt
+some English wanderer and an impossible Boer maiden, or such as relate
+the rise and fall of Chaka and Ketchwayo. And yet to me the mass of
+intrigue, the political friction, the onward march of races, and the
+conflicts above and below board, called for greater attention than the
+Zulu, even at his best.</p>
+
+<p>To a novelist (who sometimes pretends to think, however much such an
+unpopular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> tendency be hidden) environment and its necessary results are
+of infinite interest. Upon the Karroo, even when in the train, I tried
+to build up the aloof and lonely Boer, and, though I failed, there came
+to me in whiffs (like far odours borne on a westerly wind) some
+suggestions that I really understood deep in my mind how he came to be.
+The chill fresh air of the morning, before the sun was yet above the
+horizon, recalled to me some ancient dawns in far Australia: and then
+again I thought of days upon the Texan plateaux. But still the secret of
+the lone-riding Boer, who loves a country of magnificent distances,
+escaped me.</p>
+
+<p>But one early dawn, when I was half-way between Krugersdorp and
+Mafeking, I came out upon the veldt in darkness, which was a lucid
+darkness, and in the silent crisp air I stumbled upon the truth. Betwixt
+sleep and waking as I walked I felt infinite peace pour over me. So had
+the silent Campo Santo at Pisa affected me; so had I felt for a moment
+among the ancient ruins of the abbey at Rivaulx. In this dawn hour came
+a time of reversion. I too was very solitary, and loved my solitude. The
+necessities of civilisation were necessities no more: I needed luxury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+even less than I needed news. I cared for nothing that the men of a city
+ask: there was space before me and room to ride. The lack of small
+urgent stimuli, the barren growth of civilisation's weedy fields, left
+me to the great and simple organic impulses of the outstretched world.
+And in that moment I perceived that this silence is the very life of the
+wandering Boer, even though he knows it not; for it has sunk so deep
+into him that he is unaware of it. He belongs not to this age, nor to
+any age we know.</p>
+
+<p>For one long year, twenty years ago, I lived upon a great plain in
+Australia, and now I remembered how slowly I had been able to divest
+myself of my feeling of loneliness. But when I came at last to be at
+home upon that mighty stretch of earth, which seemed a summit, I grew to
+love it and to see with opened eyes its infinite charm that could be
+told to none. I knew that the need of much talk was a false need: as
+false as the diseased craving for books.</p>
+
+<p>To feel this was true of the widespread wandering folks who once came
+out of crowded Holland to resume a more ancient type, instructed me in
+what a false relation they stand to the rolling dun war-cloud of
+"Progress."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> They called in the unreverted Hollander to stand between
+them and the men of mines, and now they love the Hollander as a man
+loves a hated cousin, who is a man of his blood, but in nothing like
+him. But anything was, and is, better than to stand face to face with
+busy crowds. To have to talk, to argue, to explain to the unsympathetic
+was overmuch. The veldt called to them: it is their passion. As one
+labours in London and sinks into a dream, remembering the hills wherein
+he spends a lonely summer, among Westmorland's fells and by the becks,
+so the Boer, called cityward, looks back upon the wide and lonely veldt
+which is never too wide and never lonelier to him than to any of the
+beasts he loves to hunt.</p>
+
+<p>But the fauna disappear, and ancient civilisations crumble. And those
+who revert are once more overwhelmed by civilisation. It is a great and
+pathetic story, a story as old as the tales told in stone by the
+preserved remnants of prehistoric monsters.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, speaking of monsters, what is a stranger monster (to an eye that
+hates it or merely wonders) than the many-jointed Rand demon crawling
+along the line of banked outcrop? I saw it first by day, when it seemed
+an elongated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> wire-drawn Manchester in a pure air, but I remember it
+best as I saw it when returning from Pretoria. First I beheld the gleam
+of electric lights, and remembered the glow of Fargo in Eastern Dakota
+as I saw it across the prairie. Then the mines were no longer separate:
+they joined together and became like a fiery reptile, a dragon in the
+outcrop, clawing deep with every joint, wounding the earth with every
+claw, as a centipede wounds with every poisoned foot. The white residues
+gleamed beneath the moon, from every smoke stack poured smoke: the
+dragon breathed. Then the great white cyanide tanks were like bosses on
+the beast; the train stopped, and the battery roared. That night, for it
+was a silent and windless night, I heard forty miles of batteries
+beating on the beach of my mind like a great sea. And men laboured in
+the bowels of the earth for gold. But out upon the veldt it was very
+quiet, "quietly shining to the quiet moon." I understood then that it
+was no wonder if the simple and stolid Dutchman had a peculiar
+abhorrence for a town, which, even at night, was never at rest. In
+Johannesburg is neither rest, nor peace, nor any school for nobility of
+thought; it destroys the pleasures of the simple, and satisfies not the
+desires of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> those whose simplicity is their least striking feature.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the veldt and the Karroo, and even through the Mapani scrub country
+that lies north of Lobatsi, simplicity is the chief characteristic of
+the scenery. As I went by Victoria West (I had spent the night talking
+politics with the civillest Dutchmen) I came in early morning to the
+first Karroo I had seen. The air was tonic, like an exhilarating wine
+with some wonderful elixir in it other than alcohol, and though the
+country reminded me in places of vast plains in New South Wales, it
+lacked, or seemed to lack, the perpetual brooding melancholy that
+invests the great Austral island. As I stood on the platform of the car,
+the sun, not yet risen, gilded level clouds. The light reddened and the
+gold died: and the sudden sun sparkled like a big star, and heaved a
+round shoulder up between two of Africa's flat-topped hills, which were
+yet blue in the far distance. Then the level light of earliest day
+poured across the plateau, yellow with thin grass, which began to ask
+for rain. The picture left upon my mind is without detail, and made up
+of broad masses. Even a railway station, with some few gum trees, and
+the pinky cloud of peach blossom about the little house, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+excellently simple and homely. A distant farm, with smoke rising beneath
+the shadow of a little kopje, a band of emerald green, where irrigation
+sent its flow of water, a thousand sheep with a blanketed Kaffir minding
+them, filled the eye with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Out of such a country should come simple lives. By the sport of fate the
+cruellest complexity of politics is to be found there.</p>
+
+<p>And yet who can declare that the environment shall not in time exert its
+inevitable influence on the busy crowding English, and make them or
+their sons glad to sit upon their stoeps and smoke and look out upon the
+veldt with a quiet satisfaction which is unuttered and unutterable? The
+Karroo and the veldt do not change except according to the seasons; they
+pour their influences for ever upon those who ride across them as the
+Drakensberg Mountains send their waters down upon Natal beneath their
+mighty wall. And even now the busy Englishman complains that his
+African-born son is lazy and seems more content to live than to be for
+ever working. Each country exacts a certain amount of energy from those
+who live there; as one judges from the Boer, the tax is not over heavy.</p>
+
+<p>And as in time to come the great centre of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> interest shifts north, as
+now it seems to shift, one may prophesy with some hope, certainly
+without dread of such a result, that a more energetic Dutch race, and a
+less energetic English one, will fuse together, and look back upon their
+childish quarrels with mere historic interest. Perhaps the Dutch in
+those times will become the aristocrats, as they have done in New York;
+they may even see their chance of going for ever out of politics. For
+they never yet sat down to the political gaming-table gladly.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BY_THE_FRASER_RIVER" id="BY_THE_FRASER_RIVER"></a>BY THE FRASER RIVER</h2>
+
+<p>The first experience I had in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat,
+when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me
+round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated
+claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an
+occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt,
+which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased
+Mongolian. I went with my friend that same day into the Black Horse
+Mine, and saw quartz crushing for the first time; but, naturally enough,
+I took far more interest in the alluvial workings that can be managed by
+few friends than in operations which required capital and the
+importation of stamping machinery from England; and Ballarat, rich as it
+once was for the single miner, is now left to corporations.</p>
+
+<p>One of the strangest features of an old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>gold-mining district is its
+wasted and upturned appearance. The whole of the surrounding country is,
+as it were, eviscerated. It is all hills and hollows, which shine and
+glare in the hot sun and look exceedingly desolate. When, in addition,
+the town itself fails and fades for want of other means of support, and
+the houses fall into rack and ruin as I have seen in Oregon, the place
+resembles a disordered room seen in the morning after a gambling
+debauch. The town is happy which is able to reform and live henceforth
+on agriculture, as is now the case to a great extent with Ballarat and
+with Sandhurst, which has discarded its famous name of Bendigo.</p>
+
+<p>To a miner, or indeed to anyone in want of money, as I usually was when
+knocking about in Australian or American mining districts, the one
+painful thing is to know where untold quantities of gold lie without
+being able to get a single pennyweight of it. I remember on more than
+one occasion sitting on the banks of the Fraser River in British
+Columbia, or of the Illinois River in Oregon, pondering on the absurdity
+of my needing a hundred dollars when millions were in front of me under
+those fast-flowing streams. Those who know nothing about gold countries
+may ask how I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> knew there were millions there. The answer is simple
+enough. First let me say a few words about one common process of mining.</p>
+
+<p>When it is discovered that there is a certain quantity of gold in the
+vast deposits of gravel which are found in many places along the Pacific
+slope, but especially in Oregon and California, water, brought in a
+"flume" or aqueduct from a higher level, is directed, by means of a pipe
+and nozzle fixed on a movable stand, against the crumbling bench, which
+perhaps contains only two or three shillings-worth of gold to the ton.
+This is washed down into a sluice made of wooden boards, in which
+"riffles," or pieces of wood, are placed to stop the metal as it flows
+along in the turbid rush of water. Some amalgamated copper plates are
+put in suitable places to catch the lighter gold, or else the water
+which contains it is allowed to run into a more slowly-flowing aqueduct,
+which gives the finer scales time to settle. This, roughly put, is the
+hydraulic method of mining which causes so much trouble between the
+agricultural and mining interests in California; for the finer detritus
+of this washing, called technically "slickens," fills up the rivers,
+causes them to overflow and deposit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> what is by no means a fertilising
+material on the pastures of the Golden State.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what man does here in a small way, and with infinite labour and
+pains, Nature has been doing on a grand scale for unnumbered centuries.
+Let us, for instance, take the Fraser River and its tributary the
+Thompson, which is again made up of the North and South Forks, which
+unite at Kamloops, as the main rivers do at Lytton. The whole of the
+vast extent of mountainous country drained by these streams is known to
+be more or less auriferous. Many places, such as Cariboo, are, or were,
+richly so; and there are few spots in that part which will not yield
+what miners know as a "colour" of gold&mdash;that is, gold just sufficient to
+see, even if it is not enough to pay for working by our slight human
+methods. I have been in parts of Oregon where one might get "colour" by
+pulling up the bunches of grass that grew sparsely on a thin soil which
+just covered the rocks. But the united volumes of the Fraser and the two
+Thompsons and all their tributaries have been doing an enormous
+gold-washing business for a geological period; and all that portion of
+British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar
+to the bench of gravel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And
+just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through
+his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the
+natural sluice which is known as the Fraser Ca&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+<p>This ca&ntilde;on, which is cut through the range of mountains known
+erroneously as the Cascades, is about forty miles long, if we count from
+Lytton and Yale. In its narrowest part, at Hell Gate, a child may throw
+a stone across; and its current is tremendous. So rapidly does it run,
+that no boat can venture upon it, and nothing but a salmon can stem its
+stream. It is full, too, of whirlpools; and at times the under rush is
+so strong that the surface appears stationary. What its depth may be it
+is impossible to tell. But one thing is certain, and that is, that in
+the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities
+beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No,
+it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper ca&ntilde;on, there is a
+place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built
+up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will,
+perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> shade.
+Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on
+that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Ca&ntilde;on, on the South Fork of
+the Thompson, when that clear blue stream was at a low stage, there was
+a great landslip, which for some eighty minutes dammed back the waters
+into a lake. The whole country side gathered there with carts and
+buckets, scraping up the mud and gold from the bottom. Many thousands of
+dollars were taken out of the dry river bed before the dam gave way to
+the rising waters. And, if there was gold there, what is there even now
+in the great main sluice of the vastest natural gold mining concern ever
+set going, which has never yet since it began indulged in a "cleanup?"</p>
+
+<p>I have been asked sometimes, when speaking about the Fraser and other
+rivers, which are undoubtedly gold traps, why it was that nobody
+attempted to turn them. Of course, my questioners were neither engineers
+nor geographers. Certainly an inspection of the map of British Columbia
+would show the utter impossibility of such a scheme. To dam the Fraser
+would be like turning the Amazon. Yet once I do not doubt that it was
+dammed, and that all the upper country was a vast lake,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> until the
+waters found the way through the Cascades which it has now cut into a
+ca&ntilde;on. Otherwise I cannot account for the vast benches and terraces
+which rise along the Thompson. Indeed, the whole of the Dry Belt down to
+Lytton has the appearance, to an eye only slightly cognisant of
+geological evidence, of an ancient lacustrine valley.</p>
+
+<p>Yet much work of a similar kind to damming this river has been done in
+California; and even now there is a company at the great task of turning
+the Feather River (which is also undoubtedly gold bearing) through a
+tunnel in order to work a large portion of its bed. Whether they will
+succeed or not is perhaps doubtful; but if they do, the returns will
+probably be large, as they would be if anyone were able to turn aside
+the Illinois in Southern Oregon, or the Rogue River, which has been
+mining in the Siskiyou Range for untold generations.</p>
+
+<p>I feel certain that all human gold discovering has been a mere nothing;
+that our methods are only faint and feeble imitations of Nature, and
+that only by circumventing her shall we be able to reach the richer
+reward. But by the very vastness of her operations we are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>precluded
+from imitating the sluice robber, who does not work himself, but "cleans
+up" the rich boxes of some mining company which has undertaken a scheme
+too large for any one man.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="OLD_AND_NEW_DAYS_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA" id="OLD_AND_NEW_DAYS_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA"></a>OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA</h2>
+
+<p>The whole of this vast country&mdash;this sea of mountains, as it has very
+appropriately been called&mdash;used practically to belong to the Hudson's
+Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and
+its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were,
+and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the
+forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were
+so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the
+trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all
+the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially
+unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired
+by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost
+incredible price, as it seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> to us now, for the company made sure of
+three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally
+more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds
+when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London
+market.</p>
+
+<p>Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in
+Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government.
+The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old
+miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the
+hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor,
+and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in
+keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew
+round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who
+said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six
+pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them
+had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too,
+some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for
+packing food on their backs to the mines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> they received a dollar for
+every pound weight they brought in.</p>
+
+<p>An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a
+living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He
+was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought
+into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000
+dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never
+returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out
+in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold
+was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however,
+than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers after the old
+exciting times and the prospects of the gold-miner's toast, "Here's a
+dollar to the pan, the bed-rock pitching, and the gravel turning blue."</p>
+
+<p>Nowadays there are still plenty of men who traverse the country in all
+directions looking for new finds. They are called "prospectors," and go
+about with a pony packed with a pick, a shovel, and a few necessaries,
+hunting chiefly for quartz veins, and they talk of nothing but "quartz,"
+"bed-rock," "leads," gold and silver,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> and so many ounces to the ton. It
+is now many years ago since I was working on a small cattle ranch in the
+Kamloops district, when one of these men, a tall, grey-haired old fellow
+named Patterson, came by. My employer knew him, and asked him to stay.
+He bored us to death the whole evening, and showed innumerable
+specimens, which truly were not very promising, as it seemed to us. His
+great contempt for farming was very characteristic of the species.
+"What's a few head of rowdy steers?" asked Mr Patterson; "why, any day I
+might strike ten thousand dollars." "Yes," I answered mischievously;
+"and any day you mightn't." He turned and glared at me, demanding what I
+knew about mining. "Not a great deal," said I; "but I have seen mining
+here and in Australia, and for one that makes anything a hundred die
+dead broke." "Well," he replied, scornfully "I'd rather die that way
+than go ploughing, and I tell you I know where there is money to be
+made. Just wait till I can get hold of a capitalist."</p>
+
+<p>That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general
+rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat"
+speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Mr Patterson proposed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> I should go along with him and
+he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this
+time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least
+particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted
+to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that
+means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I
+shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of
+contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found
+dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Washington Territory
+there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for
+the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold
+fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the
+creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when
+I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything
+out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and
+in rags.</p>
+
+<p>Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a
+great extent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good
+thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be
+in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of
+ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that
+a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from
+England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done,
+was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good
+style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins
+and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were
+miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up
+his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a
+draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his
+napkin and put it in his breast pocket.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their
+virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine&mdash;and a
+remarkably intelligent woman she was&mdash;one day remarked to me that before
+white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a
+Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> gone. It is true
+enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her
+class, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too.
+A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke
+contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs &mdash;&mdash;, being a full-blooded
+Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after
+overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially
+those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of
+degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to
+supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all
+times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to
+continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often
+dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one
+handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the
+Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on
+the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.</p>
+
+<p>The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of
+the pilotage and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains
+are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at
+the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and
+those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes
+exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was
+certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a
+"riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great
+swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How
+much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we
+shall never make the riffle on that."</p>
+
+<p>The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we
+approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought
+to bear.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p><p>On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which
+tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one
+position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted
+for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on
+the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed
+would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked
+at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last.
+But I confess I did feel nervous.</p>
+
+<p>This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the
+tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her
+drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big
+rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with
+everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew
+and passengers were killed outright or drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached.
+That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the
+lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the
+<i>Peerless</i> ran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to
+see if it could be done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> The down-stream trip was done in three hours,
+but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had
+to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to
+make the trip regularly.</p>
+
+<p>As for the river in the main Fraser ca&ntilde;on, it is nothing more nor less
+than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the
+lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built
+a boat to run on it, the first time the <i>Skuzzy</i> let go of the bank she
+ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The
+railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr
+Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He
+said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a
+thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was
+refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been
+a very hazardous undertaking&mdash;as bad as, or even worse than, the <i>Maid
+of the Mist</i> going through the rapids below Niagara.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_TALK_WITH_KRUGER" id="A_TALK_WITH_KRUGER"></a>A TALK WITH KRUGER</h2>
+
+<p>It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in
+Pretoria. There was an air of lassitude about the town. President Steyn,
+of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch
+still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had
+ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch
+as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to
+meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened
+wisdom brought about the compact. As for myself, I thought little enough
+of the matter then, for Pretoria seemed curiously familiar to me, though
+I had never been there, and had never so much as seen a photograph of it
+until I saw one in Johannesburg. For some time I could not understand
+why it seemed familiar. It is true that it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> some resemblance to a
+tenth-rate American town in which the Australian gum-trees had been
+acclimatised, as they have been in some malarious spots in California.
+And in places I seemed to recall Americanised Honolulu. Yet it was not
+this which made me feel I knew Pretoria. It was something in the aspect
+of the people, something in the air of the men, combined doubtless with
+topographical reminiscence. And when I came to my hotel and had settled
+down, I began to see why I knew it. The whole atmosphere of the city
+reeked of the very beginnings of finance. It was the haunt of the
+concession-monger; of the lobbyist; of the men who wanted something.
+These I had seen before in some American State capitals; the anxious
+face of the concession-hunter had a family likeness to the man of
+Lombard Street: the obsession of the gold-seeker was visible on every
+other face I looked at.</p>
+
+<p>In the hotels they sat in rows: some were silent, some talked anxiously,
+some were in spirits and spoke with cheerfulness. It pleased my solitary
+fancy to label them. These had got their concessions, they were going
+away; these still hoped strongly, and were going to-morrow and
+to-morrow; these still held on,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> and were going later; these again had
+ceased to hope, but still stayed as a sickened miner will hang round a
+played-out claim. They were all gamblers, and his Honour the President
+was the Professional Gambler who kept the House, who dealt the cards,
+and too often (as they thought) "raked in the pot," or took his heavy
+commission. And I had nothing to ask for; all I wanted was to see the
+tables if I could, and have a talk with him who kept them.</p>
+
+<p>The President is an accessible man. He does not hide behind his dignity:
+he affects a patriarchal simplicity, and is ever ready to receive his
+own people or the stranger within his gates. His unaffected affectation
+is to be a simpleton of character: he tells all alike that he is a
+simple old man, and expects everyone to chuckle at the transparent
+absurdity of the notion. Was it possible, then, for me to see him and
+have a talk with him? I was told to apply to a well-known Pretorian
+journalist. As I was also a journalist of sorts, and not wholly unknown,
+it was highly probable he would assist me in my desire not to leave
+Pretoria without seeing the Father of his people. But my informant
+added: "The President will say nothing&mdash;he can say nothing in very few
+words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> If you want him to talk, say 'Rhodes.'" I thanked my new hotel
+acquaintance and and said I would say "Rhodes" if it seemed necessary.
+And next afternoon I walked down Church Street with the journalist W&mdash;&mdash;
+and came to the President's house. We had an appointment, and after
+waiting half-an-hour in the <i>stoep</i> with four or five typical and silent
+Boers, Mr Kruger came out in company with a notorious Pretorian
+financier, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth
+more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies.
+And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to
+each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W&mdash;&mdash;,
+who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant <i>taal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have
+seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his
+face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and
+smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not
+always attain that accuracy of marksmanship supposed to be
+characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are
+not quite clean; his clothes were probably never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> intended to fit him.
+And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes
+from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity
+is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is
+sometimes seen under the <i>blouse</i> of an old French peasant who still
+remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt
+face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt
+had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi.
+Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers
+crowned its heights, here before me was something that was passing away.
+But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening
+Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British
+Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he
+had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers
+chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had
+been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And
+so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely
+rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.</p>
+
+<p>Then we talked about Johannesburg, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> the President puffed smoke
+against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a
+very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of
+the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and
+declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted,
+but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut
+off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed
+at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed
+again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot
+of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet.
+I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by saying that they
+had even more reason to be loyal than the English, seeing that if
+England were ousted from the Continent the Germans would come in; but he
+evaded the question at issue by asserting that if the Cape Dutch
+intrigued against the Queen he would neither aid nor countenance them.
+Then, as the conversation seemed in danger of languishing, I did what I
+had been told to do and mentioned Rhodes.</p>
+
+<p>It was odd to observe the instant change in the President's demeanour.
+He lost his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> stolidity, and became voluble and emphatic. Rhodes was
+evidently his sore point; and he abused him with fervour and with
+emphasis. All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes
+had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa
+would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose
+chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon
+and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked
+himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his
+declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of
+the journalist who was interpreting for me. Every time that heavy hand
+came down I saw poor W&mdash;&mdash; wince; he was shaken to his foundations. But
+he endured the punishment like a martyr, and said nothing. I dropped ice
+into the President's boiling mind by asking him if he thought it would
+remove danger from the situation if Mr Rhodes and Mr Chamberlain were
+effectually muzzled by the Imperial Government. His peasant-like caution
+instantly returned; he smoked steadily for a minute, and then declared
+he would say nothing on that point. It was not necessary; he had showed,
+without the shadow of a doubt, that he was an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> old man who was, in a
+sense, insane on one point. Rhodes was his fixed pathological idea. This
+Tenterden steeple was the cause of the revolutionary Goodwin Sands.</p>
+
+<p>As a last question about the Cape Dutch, I asked if, when he declared he
+would not aid them against the Queen, he would act against them; he
+replied denying in general terms the right to revolt. I said, "But the
+right of revolution is the final safeguard of liberty"; and his Honour
+did nothing but grunt. From his point of view he could neither deny nor
+affirm this safely, and so our interview came to an end.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="TROUT_FISHING_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA_AND_CALIFORNIA" id="TROUT_FISHING_IN_BRITISH_COLUMBIA_AND_CALIFORNIA"></a>TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA</h2>
+
+<p>At that time I acknowledge that trout-fishing as a real art I knew
+nothing of; whipping English waters had been almost entirely denied me,
+and with the exception of a week on a river near Oswestry, and a day in
+Cornwall, I had never thrown a fly over a pool where a trout might
+reasonably be supposed to exist. But in British Columbia I used to catch
+them in quantities and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by
+an expert) that using a grasshopper as a bait is no better than
+poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line,"
+or <i>Cocculus indicus</i>. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of
+the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to
+fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small
+tin can with those lively insects.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p><p>Owing to the fact that I was working for my living on a ranch at Cherry
+Creek, I had no chance of fishing on week-days, but on Sundays, after
+breakfast, I used to take my primitive willow rod from the roof, where
+it had been for six days, see that the ten or twelve feet of string was
+as sound at least as my frayed yard of gut, examine my hook, and then
+start hunting grasshoppers. That meant a deal of violent exercise,
+especially if the wind was blowing, for they fly down it or are driven
+down it with sufficient velocity to make a man run. Moreover, near the
+ranche they were mostly of a very surprising alertness, owing,
+doubtless, to the fact that the fowls, in their eagerness to support
+Darwin's theory of natural selection, soon picked up the slow and lazy
+ones. But after an hour's hard work I usually got some fifty or so, and
+that would last for a whole day, or at anyrate for a whole afternoon.
+Then I went to the creek, fishing up it and down it with a democratic
+disregard of authority.</p>
+
+<p>Cherry Creek was only a small stream; here and there it rattled over
+rocks, and stayed in a deep pool. Now and again it ran as fast as the
+water in a narrow flume; and then the banks grew ca&ntilde;on-like for fifty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+yards. But for almost the whole of its length it went through dense
+brush, so dense in parts that it defied anyone but a bear to get through
+it. But when I did reach a secluded pool and manage to thrust my rod out
+over the water and slowly unwind my bait, I was almost always rewarded
+by a lively mountain trout as long as my hand, for they never ran over
+six inches. The grasshopper was absolutely deadly; no fish seemed able
+to resist it, and sometimes in ten minutes I took six, or even ten, out
+of a pool as big as an ordinary dining-room table. The fact of the
+matter is that the greatest difficulty lay in getting to the water. When
+I fished up stream into the narrow gorge through which the creek ran, I
+often walked four or five miles before I got the small tin bucket, which
+was my creel, half full; yet I knew that if I could have really fished
+five hundred yards of it I might have gone home with a full catch.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not so much the fishing as the strange solitude, the thick,
+lonely brush, that made such excursions pleasant. Every now and again I
+came to a spur of the mountains, and climbed up into the open and lay
+among the red barked bull-pines. If I went a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> higher I could
+catch sight of the dun-coloured hills which ran down, as I knew, to the
+waters of Kamloops Lake, only five miles distant. If I felt hungry, I
+could easily light a fire and broil the trout; with a bit of bread,
+carried in my pocket, and a draught from a spring or the creek itself, I
+made a hearty meal. And all day long I saw no human being. Every now and
+again I might come across a half-wild bullock or a wilder horse, or see
+the track of a wolf, but that was all, save the song of the birds, the
+wind among the trees, and the ceaseless murmurs of the creek. In the
+evening I made my way back in time to give the cook what I had caught.</p>
+
+<p>In California I used to fish in the small creek running at the back of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, and, though the trout were by no
+means so plentiful there as in British Columbia, I often caught two or
+three dozen in the afternoon. But there I had to use worms, and they
+seemed far less attractive than the soft, sweet body of the grasshopper.
+Yet once I caught a very large fish for that part of the country. He was
+evidently a fish with a history, as I caught him in a big tank sunk in
+the earth, which supplied the ranch, and was itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> supplied by a long
+flume. As I went home past this tank one day I carelessly dropped the
+bait in, and it was instantly seized by a trout I knew to be larger than
+I had yet hooked. But, though he was big, he had very little chance. The
+smooth sides of the tank afforded him no hole to rush for, and, after a
+short struggle, I hauled him out. My only fear was that my rotten line
+would part, for he weighed almost a pound, and I was accustomed to fish
+of less than seven ounces.</p>
+
+<p>I often wondered in British Columbia why so few people fished. In some
+of the creeks running into the Fraser River, near Yale, I have seen
+splendid trout of two or three pounds; there would be a dozen in sight
+at once very often. They always seemed in good condition, too, which was
+more than could be said for the salmon, for those were half of them very
+white with the fungus, as one could easily see on the Kamloops or
+Shushwap Lakes from the bows of the steamer if the water was smooth.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the reason there are no trout-fishers out there is that those
+who care sufficiently for any kind of sport find it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> more to their taste
+to hunt deer, bear or cariboo. When these have disappeared, as they
+must, seeing the ruthless manner in which they are slaughtered, many may
+be glad to take to the milder and less ferocious trout. The country
+certainly affords very good fishing, and the spring and summer climate
+is perfect. If it were only a little nearer they might be properly
+educated, until they were far too wary to fall into the simple traps
+laid for them by a man who fished with a piece of string and carried a
+bucket for a creel. It may have been my brutal ignorance of tying flies,
+but when I tried them with what I could furbish up, they seemed to
+resent the thing as an insult. So there seems some hope of their being
+capable of instruction.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ROUND_THE_WORLD_IN_HASTE" id="ROUND_THE_WORLD_IN_HASTE"></a>ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE</h2>
+
+<p>When I went to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I
+could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York
+slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did
+not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by
+any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one
+spends enough money; but I was at that time in no position to sling
+dollars about, and, besides, I wanted some of the English rust knocked
+off me. Living in England ends in making a man poor of resource. I
+hardly know an ordinary Londoner who would not shiver at the notion of
+being "dead broke" in any foreign city, to say nothing of one on the
+other side of the world; and though it is not a pleasant experience it
+has some charms and many uses. It wakes a man up, shows him the real
+world again, and makes him know his own value once more. So I started
+for New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> York in rather a devil-may-care spirit, without the slightest
+chance of doing the business in comfort. And my misfortunes began at
+once in that city.</p>
+
+<p>To save time and money I went in the first quick vessel that
+crossed&mdash;the <i>Lucania</i>; and I went second-class. It was an experience to
+run twenty-two knots an hour; but it has made me greedy since. I want to
+do any future journeys in a torpedo-boat. As to the second-class crowd,
+they were, as they always are on board Western ocean boats, a set of
+hogs. The difference between first and second-class passengers is one of
+knowing when and where to spit, to put no fine point on it. I was glad
+when we reached New York on that account.</p>
+
+<p>I meant to stay there three days, but my business took me a fortnight,
+and money flowed like water. It soaked up dollars like a new gold mine,
+and I saw what I meant for the Eastern journey sink like water in sand.
+But I had to get to San Francisco. I took that journey in sections. All
+my trouble in New York was to get across the continent. I let the
+Pacific take care of itself, being sure I could conquer that difficulty
+when the time came. I recommend this frame of mind to all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> travellers. I
+acquired the habit myself in the United States when I jumped trains
+instead of paying my fare. It is most useful to think of no more than
+the matter in hand, for then we can use one's whole faculties at one
+time. Too much forethought is fatal to progress, and if I had really
+considered difficulties I could have stayed in England and written a
+story instead, a most loathsome <i>pis aller</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean to say that I was without money. All I do mean is that I
+had less than half that I should have had, unless I meant to cross the
+continent as a tramp in a "side-door Pullman," as the tramping
+fraternity call a box car, and the Pacific in the steerage. As a matter
+of fact, I proposed to do neither. I wanted a free pass over one of the
+American railroads, and if there had been time I should have got it. I
+tackled the agents, and "struck" them for a pass. I assured them that I
+was a person of illimitable influence, and that if I rode over their
+system, and simply mentioned the fact casually on my return, all Europe
+would follow me. I insinuated that their traffic returns would rise to
+heights unheard of: that their rivals would smash and go into the hands
+of receivers. It was indeed a beautiful, beautiful game, and reminded
+one of poker,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't
+come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little
+time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco
+Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got
+euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of
+forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that
+ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap
+train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made
+me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very
+glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning
+not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds
+in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who
+cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith
+which was not unrewarded in the end.</p>
+
+<p>My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight
+till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney
+was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the
+transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of
+the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> some rustling to get
+through it all. I had to rustle.</p>
+
+<p>As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was
+on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the
+slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was
+quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty
+rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which
+runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one
+station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the
+dep&ocirc;t of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always;
+I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And
+now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was
+like a buried city with dust and cinders.</p>
+
+<p>"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly
+porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."</p>
+
+<p>Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers
+mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted
+basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and
+discovered somebody underneath that at anyrate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> reminded me of myself,
+and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had
+gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.</p>
+
+<p>From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats
+with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the
+cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the
+conductor grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.</p>
+
+<p>So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I
+knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't
+have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one
+nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a
+racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I
+chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was
+going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I
+must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my
+H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about
+the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up
+greatly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> we were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras
+and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd
+picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the
+passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat
+at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The
+dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white
+sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable
+body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the
+elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for
+ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the
+daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly
+with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for
+the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently,
+and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a
+third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely
+needed. I went out to inspect the city.</p>
+
+<p>It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The
+gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> the
+Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their
+monotonous ugliness into the sky.</p>
+
+<p>In this city I had starved for three solid months, picking up a meal
+where I could find it. I had been without a bed for three weeks. I had
+shared begged food with beggars. Now I came back to it under far
+different circumstances. I walked in the afternoon to some of my old
+haunts, and, coming to the hideous den of a common lodging-house where I
+had once lived, my flesh crept. I remembered that once the agent for a
+directory had put down "Charles Roberts, labourer," as living there and
+I tried to get back into my old skin. For a while I succeeded, but the
+experiment was horrible, and I was glad to drop the dead past and leave
+the grimy water front where I had looked and looked in vain for work.</p>
+
+<p>For a week I stayed in San Francisco. Then I had an experience which
+falls to few men, for I went to stay as a visitor at Los Guilucos, where
+I had once been a stableman. The situation was interesting, for there
+were still many men in the ranch who had worked with me; even the
+Chinese cook was there. In the old days he had often appealed to me for
+more wood to give his devouring dragon of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> a stove. But things were
+altered now. On the first morning of my stay I saw the wood pile, and
+could not help taking my coat off and lighting into it with the axe. The
+Chinaman came running out with uplifted hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr Loberts, Mr Loberts, you no splittee me wood, you too much welly
+kind gentleman, you no splittee me wood!"</p>
+
+<p>So things change, but I split him a barrow load all the same.</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry to leave the ranch and go back to San Francisco, where nine
+men out of ten in all degrees of society are much too disagreeable for
+words. The only really decent fellows I met there were a Frenchman and a
+young mining engineer named Brandt, son of Dr Brandt, at Royat, who was
+once R. L. Stevenson's physician; and above all an Irish surveyor and
+architect, the most charming and genial of men. The Californians
+themselves are less worth knowing as they appear to have money; the
+moment they begin to fancy themselves a cut above the vulgar, their
+vulgarity is their chief feature, stupendous as the Rocky Mountains, as
+obvious as the Grand Duke of Johannisberg's nose. But I had other things
+to think of than the social parodies of the Slope.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>I found at the Poste Restante a letter from my agent, which was a frank
+statement of misfortune and ill-luck. There was not a red cent in it,
+and I had only a hundred dollars left. This was just enough to pay my
+steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there
+was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one
+of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long
+article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new
+standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to
+wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times
+as high as in the West.</p>
+
+<p>I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me
+for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash
+a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never
+regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still
+retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information
+to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed,
+approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I
+washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man,
+who helped me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> over the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go
+steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my
+ante I meant staying with the game.</p>
+
+<p>For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend
+in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York
+for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old
+friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as
+important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I
+saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this
+gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short.
+It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty
+is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on
+the strength of it.</p>
+
+<p>In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have
+written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and
+it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the
+gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort,
+but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I
+found it was all right. I was not only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> all right, for inside of an hour
+I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for
+the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that
+I might have got it for less, but I have found it a good business rule
+never to lose a good thing by trying for a better. I had accommodation
+equal to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Of course, I regretted I
+dare not ask them one hundred dollars for condescending to go in their
+boat. If I had been full of money I might have tried it. However, I was
+quite happy and satisfied. That I might land in Sydney with nothing did
+not trouble me. Three days after I went on board the steamer, and was
+seen off by my friend the Irishman and one other.</p>
+
+<p>I had never sailed on the Pacific, or at least that part of it, before,
+and its wonders were strange to me. I had not seen coral islands, nor
+cocoanuts growing. It grieved me that I could not afford to stay in
+Honolulu and visit Kilauea. I only remained some hours, which I spent in
+prowling about the town, which is like a tenth-rate city in America. And
+the business American has his claw into it for good. The Hawaiians, in
+truth, seem to care little. They go blithely in the streets crowned and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+garlanded with flowers, and even the leprosy that strikes one now and
+again with worse than living death seems far away.</p>
+
+<p>On board the <i>Monowai</i>, most comfortable of ships, commanded by Captain
+Carey, best of skippers, life was easy and delightful. Our one romance
+was between San Francisco and the Islands, for an individual, with most
+incredible cheek, managed to go first-class from California almost to
+Honolulu without a ticket. Two days from the Islands he was bowled out,
+and set to shovel coals. We left him in gaol at Honolulu, and steamed
+south of Samoa.</p>
+
+<p>It was good to be at last in the tropics, deep into them, and to wear
+white all day and feel the heat tempered by the Trades. We played games
+and sang and lazed and loafed, and life had no troubles. Why should I
+think of future difficulties when there were none at hand, and the
+weather was lovely? We ran at last into Apia, the harbour of Upolu, the
+island where the late Robert Louis Stevenson lived. I rushed ashore, met
+him, spent three more than pleasant hours with him, and away again round
+the island reefs with our noses pointed for Auckland.</p>
+
+<p>Some of our passengers had left us at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Honolulu, others dropped off at
+Samoa, but after Auckland, when the weather grew quite cold, we were a
+thin little band, and our spirits oozed away. We could not keep things
+lively, the decks seemed empty, I was glad to run into Sydney harbour. I
+found I had just enough money to get to Melbourne if I went at once, so
+I caught the mail train and soon smelt the Australian bush that I had
+left in 1878. On reaching Melbourne at mid-day I had fifteen shillings
+left. Dumping my baggage at the station, I hunted up my chief friend, a
+journalist. The very first thing he handed me was a cablegram demanding
+my instant return to England. My rage can be imagined; it would take
+strong language to describe it, for I had meant to stay in Australia for
+a year, and write a book about it from another standpoint than <i>Land
+Travel and Seafaring</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I hadn't even enough money to live anywhere. I couldn't cable for any,
+for if my instructions had been obeyed, all available cash was now on
+its way to me, when I couldn't wait for it. I talked it over with my
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no money?" I asked, but then I knew he had none.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody has any money in Australia," he answered. "If it is known you
+have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> sovereign in cash you will be pestered in Collins Square by
+millionaires, whose wealth is locked up in moribund banks, for mere
+half-crowns as a temporary accommodation."</p>
+
+<p>I pondered a while.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a plan whereby we may get a trifle in the meantime. You can
+write a long interview with me and I will take the money. Sit down and
+don't move."</p>
+
+<p>He remonstrated feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, why not do it yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be taking a mean advantage of other writers," I said.
+"Besides, I'm in no mood to write."</p>
+
+<p>Overcome by my generosity, he at last wrote a column and a half. I shall
+always treasure that interview, for when he tired I dictated some of it
+myself. The only thing I really objected to was his determination not to
+let me say what I meant to say about the Australian financial outlook.
+Under the circumstance of the failure of credit, the matter touched me
+deeply, and was a personal grievance. But he persisted that if I were
+too pessimistic the article would never see type, and I couldn't have
+the money. I gave way, and condescended to have hopes about Australia.
+But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> even when I got his cheque I was not much further forward.</p>
+
+<p>I went to my banker's agents and asked them to cash a cheque. Would I
+pay for a cable home and out? No I would not, because I didn't know
+whether my account was overdrawn or not. All I knew was that if they
+would cash a cheque I would telegraph from Port Said or Naples and see
+it was met. So that failed. I tried Cook's, who had cashed cheques for
+me on the Continent. They also spoke of cabling. I explained matters,
+but they had no faith. Nobody had.</p>
+
+<p>I began to think I would have to work my passage, for I was determined
+to get away inside of two weeks or perish. I looked up the vessels in
+port in case I might know some of them. They were all strangers. In such
+cases, unless one is in a hurry such as I was, for my return was urgent,
+it is best to tackle some cargo boat. It is often possible to get a
+passage for a quarter the mail-boat fare, for the tramp steamer's
+captain looks on the fare as his own and never mentions passengers to
+the owner. But I couldn't wait for a good old tramp, and at last, in
+despair, my friend and a friend of his and I clubbed everything together
+that was valuable and raised a fare to Naples<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> on the proceeds. I left
+Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and
+got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse
+snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we
+caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the
+breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend. I
+raised five pounds on a cheque with the steward and spent the whole of
+it in rickshaws and carriages. I saw what one could in the time, for I
+breakfasted at one place, lunched at another, dined at a third. I mean
+one of these days to spend a week or two at the Galle Face Hotel,
+Colombo. At Mount Lavinia I got the one dinner of my life. I cordially
+recommend the cooking.</p>
+
+<p>We ran to Cape Guardafui in a gale, a sticky hot gale which made life
+unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied
+the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two
+Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But
+my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the
+vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand
+looked like snow-drifts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> In the day the far-off deserts were a dream of
+red sands, and red sand mingled with the horizon. At last we came to the
+Mediterranean and I landed at Naples. The driver of my carrozzella took
+my last money, so I put up at a good hotel and wired to England at the
+hotel-keeper's expense. I went overland to London, and was back there in
+four days under four months from the time I started from New York.</p>
+
+<p>There are scores of people&mdash;I meet them every day&mdash;who are in a constant
+state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it
+is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to
+know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A
+first-class ticket from London <i>vi&acirc;</i> New York, San Francisco, Sydney,
+Melbourne, Colombo, the Suez, Naples, Gibraltar and Plymouth will run to
+&pound;125, without including the cost of sleeping-car accommodation and food
+in the American trans-continental journey. If he stays anywhere it is a
+mighty knowing and economical traveller who gets off under &pound;200 or &pound;250
+by the time he turns up in London.</p>
+
+<p>Now as to what it cost me when I meant doing it moderately. It cost &pound;8
+to New York.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> Owing to business in New York I stayed there a fortnight,
+and it cost me $4 a day, say &pound;11. The journey to San Francisco ran to
+&pound;12 including provisions. The Pacific voyage was &pound;22 in all. The fare
+from Sydney to Melbourne for ocean passengers is &pound;2. 1s. 6d. To Naples I
+paid &pound;32. Another &pound;12 brought me to London. This runs up to &pound;99.</p>
+
+<p>If I had not been in a hurry I could have done the homeward part for
+less. If I had been twenty-five I would have gone steerage. But with
+time to spare for looking up a tramp I might have easily got to London
+as the only passenger for &pound;20. If I had not stayed in New York and had
+had the time I could have cut expenses to &pound;70.</p>
+
+<p>But any young man, writer or not, who wants to see a bit of the world,
+can do it on that if he has the grit to rough it. He can cut the
+Atlantic journey to &pound;3, and learn some things he never knew while doing
+it. I can put anyone up to crossing America for &pound;15 at any time. But if
+he spends &pound;20 he can see Niagara, the work of God, and Chicago, the
+<i>chef d'&oelig;uvre</i> of the Devil. The Pacific can be done for &pound;20
+steerage; and he can stay in Australia a month for &pound;10, and a year for
+&pound;20 if he knows what I know. The steerage fare home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> is &pound;16. I fancy it
+would be the best investment that any young fellow could make. He would
+learn more of what life is than the world of London would teach him in
+the ordinary grooves in ten years.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BLUE_JAYS_AND_ALMONDS" id="BLUE_JAYS_AND_ALMONDS"></a>BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS</h2>
+
+<p>On Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, where I worked for six
+months in 1886, there was a very large orchard. I know how large it was
+on account of having to do much too much work with the apricots, plums
+and cherries; and day by day, as one fruit or the other ripened, I
+cursed the capable climate of the Pacific slope, which produced so
+largely. Fortunately, however, the lady who owned the ranch did not
+trouble her head greatly about the almonds, of which we had a very fine
+double avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and
+there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian
+vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had
+sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of
+picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> and
+cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but
+for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember
+my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied
+themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the
+stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked
+suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree
+overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken
+and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to
+the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on
+the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big
+limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni
+walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe.
+Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just
+there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out
+a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of
+almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked
+them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower.
+Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every
+likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the
+avenue&mdash;sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite
+as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.</p>
+
+<p>Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies,
+who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable
+climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store
+up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never
+been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were
+inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never
+corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths
+of winter, why he had been fool enough to drop his savings into a bank
+with the conscience of an ill-regulated automatic machine, which takes
+everything and gives nothing back. If he had really needed the almonds,
+they would have been put in an accessible spot. Though this perhaps is a
+scientific view, I must acknowledge that we were grateful to the birds
+who stored them for us, and, by making fools of themselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> gave us the
+opportunity of gathering, if not grapes from thistles, at least almonds
+from oaks.</p>
+
+<p>Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of
+the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn
+in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation
+commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage
+grubs&mdash;that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave
+these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is
+no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the
+jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an
+explanation&mdash;to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn
+mystery&mdash;is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated
+the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or
+accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into&mdash;indeed they will
+place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the
+bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid
+on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in
+so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> they had
+themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the
+bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It
+must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find
+it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to
+have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder,
+less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there
+were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the
+Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there
+from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IN_CORSICA" id="IN_CORSICA"></a>IN CORSICA</h2>
+
+<p>Once, no doubt, Corsica was a savage, untamed, untrimmed kind of
+country, and a man's life was little safer than it is to-day in the
+neighbouring island of Sardinia. There were brigands and bandits and
+families engaged in the private warfare of the vendetta, so that things
+were as lively and exciting as they get in parts of Virginia at times.
+Killing was certainly no murder, and even yet the vendetta flourishes to
+some extent. There is nothing harder than to get a high-spirited
+southern population ready to acknowledge the majesty of the law. The
+attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young
+East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his
+particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't
+be able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's
+time. French justice is a fairly good brand of justice after all. The
+magistrates administer the law, and the system of military roads all
+over the island makes it easy for the police to get about. When a
+criminal gets away from them he has to take to the hills and to keep
+there. It is such solitary fugitives who still give the stranger a
+notion that the country is essentially criminal. But he is a bandit, not
+a brigand. He may rob, but he does not kidnap. His idea of ransom is
+what is in a man's pockets, not what his Government will pay to prevent
+having his throat cut. After all, there is such a thing in England as
+highway robbery, and in Corsica robbery is usually without violence. If
+a bandit is treated as a gentleman he will be polite, even though he
+points a gun at a visitor's stomach and requests him to hand over all he
+happens to have about him.</p>
+
+<p>I went to Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of
+the island than I did. We landed at Bastia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> where, by the way, Nelson
+also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the
+most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring,
+sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the
+most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for
+that matter, in the world. For the island is fertile and is yet barren;
+it is mountainous and has great stretches of plain in it along the
+eastern shore. Though it is but fifty miles across and little more than
+a hundred long, there is a real range of rugged high mountains in it,
+two of them, Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, being nearly 9000 feet high,
+while three others, Pagliorba, Padre and d'Oro are over 7000 feet. The
+rocks of these ranges are primary and metamorphic, and the scenery is
+bold. Yet it is kindly and gracious for the forests are thick. On the
+peaks, and in the recesses of the loftier forests, a wild black sheep,
+the mufflon, can still be hunted. And the tumbling streams and rivers
+are full of trout. There are few better trout streams in Europe than the
+Golo, which runs into the sea on the east coast through a big salt-water
+lagoon called Biguglia. When I saw it the stream<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> was in fine order, and
+I longed to get out of the train to throw a fly upon it. For the island
+is now so civilised that a railway runs from Bastia across the summit of
+the island by the towns of Corte and Vivario down to Ajaccio. But when I
+and my friend were there the train only ran to Corte. We had to drive
+from there across the summit to Vivario, whither the rail had reached,
+in the western slope of the hills. Corte sits queen-like on the summit
+of the island, and is quiet and ancient. Yet some day it will be, like
+Orezza with its strong iron waters, a health resort. The French go more
+and more to Corsica, and the intruding English have what is practically
+an English hotel at Ajaccio. There is another in the forests of
+Vizzavona.</p>
+
+<p>It is a quick descent from the summit to Ajaccio, which lies smiling in
+its gulf, that is somewhat like one of the deep indentations of Puget
+Sound. We stayed there for a week and during that time took a
+<i>diligence</i> and went up to Vico. It was on this little forty-mile
+journey among the hills that I saw most of Corsica's character. And at
+first it was curiously melancholy to me. As we drove inland we met
+numbers of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> peasants, men and women, and at first it seemed as if a
+great epidemic must have devastated the country. Almost every woman we
+saw was in black. But this comes from a habit that they have of wearing
+black for three years after any of their relatives die. Even in a
+healthy country (and the lowlands, or the <i>plage</i> of Corsica, is not
+healthy in summer) most families must lose a member in three years, and
+thus it happens that most of the women are in perpetual mourning. The
+solidarity of the family is great in Corsica. It must be or women would
+not renounce their natural and beautiful dress to adorn themselves with
+colours. It was curious to see at times some young girl not in mourning.
+I could not help thinking that she had an unfair advantage over her
+darkly-dressed fellows.</p>
+
+<p>We came at last to Vico in the hills, and found it picturesque to the
+last degree, and quite equally unsanitary. It was at once beautifully
+picturesque and foully offensive. Nothing less than a tropical
+thunderstorm could have cleansed it. But none of its inhabitants minded.
+They loafed about the deadly streams of filth and were quite unconscious
+of anything disagreeable in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> air. A Spanish village is purity itself
+to such a place as Vico. But then the proud and haughty Corsicans object
+to doing any work except upon their own fields. If an ordinance had been
+passed to cleanse Vico's streets and that dreadful main drain, its
+stream from the hills, it would have been necessary to import Italians
+to do it. For all hard labour outside mere tillage is done by them. I
+would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at
+which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village
+higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here
+and there through <i>le maquis</i>, the scrub or bush of Corsica. And as we
+went we got a good view of many little mountain villages, which hang for
+the most part on the slope of the hills, being neither in the valley nor
+on the summit. We were high enough to be among the chestnuts; vineyards
+there were none. And at last we came to Renno, and found the villagers
+taking a sad holiday. I spoke to them in bad Italian, and found that it
+seemed good Corsican to them, perhaps even classical Corsican, if there
+be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> such a thing, and learnt that there had been a funeral of a little
+child that morning. They proposed to do no more work that day. Most of
+the men were loafing along a wall by their little inn, and they were
+soon reinforced by many women. In a few minutes the village had almost
+forgotten the funeral in the excitement of seeing two strangers,
+foreigners, Englishmen. They told us that so far as they remember no
+foreigner, not even a Frenchman, had been there before. Their village
+was indeed lost to the world; they looked on Vico, evil-smelling Vico,
+as a great, fine town: Ajaccio was a distant and immense city. But no
+one from Renno had been there. It was indeed possible that most of the
+inhabitants had never seen the sea. There was something touching in this
+quaint and simple isolation, and the men were simple too. I invited the
+whole male population of the place to drink with me at the poor little
+<i>cabaret</i>. The drink they took (it was the only drink save some sour
+wine) was white brandy at ten centimes the glass. To make friends in
+this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two
+francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small
+measure their curiosity about the world beyond<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> <i>le maquis</i>, and beyond
+the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman,
+spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless
+in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing
+this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult
+point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of
+us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in
+Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke
+"Pondicherry?"</p>
+
+<p>Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other
+island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its
+native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and
+indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn
+off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to
+speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the
+vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and
+mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild
+black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law
+and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> They
+are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians.
+And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics
+than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I
+know not with what accuracy, that most of the <i>mouchards</i>, or spies, and
+the <i>agents provocateurs</i> of the French police, are Corsican by birth.
+But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the
+birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ON_THE_MATTERHORN" id="ON_THE_MATTERHORN"></a>ON THE MATTERHORN</h2>
+
+<p>Owing to my having read very little Alpine literature, I have seen but
+few attempts to analyse the mental experiences of the novice who, for
+the first time, ascends any of the higher peaks. And having read nothing
+upon the subject I was naturally curious, while I was at Zermatt this
+last summer, as to what these experiences were. I may own frankly that
+the desire to find out had a great deal to do with my trying
+mountaineering. A writer, and especially a writer of fiction, has, I
+think, one plain duty always before him. He ought to know, and cannot
+refuse to learn, even at the cost of toil and trouble, all the ways of
+the human mind. And experience at second-hand can never be relied on.
+The average man is afraid of saying he was afraid. And the average
+climber is one who has long passed the interesting stage when he first
+faced the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> unknown. I was obviously a novice, and a green one, when I
+tried the Matterhorn. That I was such a novice is the only thing which
+makes me think my experience at all interesting from the psychological
+point of view. And to my mind that point of view is also the literary
+one.</p>
+
+<p>On looking back I certainly believe I was very much afraid of the
+mountains in general and of the Matterhorn in particular. It is
+difficult, however, to say where fear begins and mere natural
+nervousness leaves off. Fear, after all, is often the note of warning
+sounded by a man's organism in the face of the unknown. It is hardly
+strange it should be felt upon the mountains. But if I was afraid of the
+mountains (and I thought that I was) I was certainly curious. During my
+first week at Zermatt I had done a good second-class peak, but had been
+told that the difference between the first and second class was
+prodigious. This naturally excited curiosity. And I began to feel that
+my curiosity could only be satisfied by climbing the Matterhorn. For one
+thing that mountain has a great name; for another it looks inaccessible.
+And it had only been done once that year. If I did it I should be the
+first Englishman on the summit for the season.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> And the guides were
+doubtful whether it would "go."</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, was it not said by folks who climbed to the Schwartzsee
+that the mountain was really easy? Were not the slabs above the Shoulder
+roped? Did not processions go up it in the middle of the season? And yet
+it was now only the first of July and there was a good deal of new snow
+on the mountain. And why were the guides just a little doubtful? Perhaps
+they were doubtful of me; and yet Joseph Pollinger had taken me up three
+smaller peaks. I decided that I had hired him to do the thinking. But I
+could not make him do it all.</p>
+
+<p>The day I had spent upon the Wellenkuppe had been a time of imagination,
+and I had seen the beauty of things. But from the Matterhorn I can
+eliminate the element of beauty. I saw very little beauty in it or from
+it. I had other things to do than to think of the sublime. But I could
+think of the ridiculous, and at one o'clock in the morning, when we
+started from the hut with a lantern, I said the whole proceeding was
+folly. I was a fool to be there. And down below me, far below me,
+glimmered the crevassed slopes of the Furgg Glacier. I grew callous and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+absorbed, and I shrugged my shoulders as the dawn came up. I did not
+care to turn my eyes to look upon the red rose glory of the lighted Dom
+and T&auml;schhorn. Let them glow!</p>
+
+<p>At the upper ice-filled hut we rested. The vastness of the mountain
+began to affect me. I saw by now that the Wellenkuppe was a little
+thing. The three thousand extra feet made all the difference. This was
+obviously beyond me, and I could never get to the summit. It was
+ridiculous of the Pollingers to think I could. I told them so quite
+crossly as we went on. Probably they had made a mistake; they would, no
+doubt, find it out on the Shoulder. It seemed rather hard that I should
+have to get there when it was so easy to turn back at once. But I said
+nothing more and climbed. My heart did its work well, and my head did
+not ache. This was a surprise to me, as I had looked for some sort of
+<i>malaise</i> above twelve thousand feet. As it did not come I stared at the
+big world about me. I viewed it all with a kind of anger and alarmed
+surprise. Where was I being taken to? I began to see they were taking me
+out of the realm of the usual. I was rapidly ascending into the
+unknown,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> and I did not like it in the least. If we fell from the
+<i>ar&ecirc;te</i> we might not stop going for four thousand feet. Down below, a
+thin, blue line was a <i>bergschrund</i> that was capable of swallowing an
+army corps. That patch of bluish patina was a tumbled mass of <i>s&eacute;racs</i>.
+The sloping glacier looked flat.</p>
+
+<p>Then the guides said we were going slowly. I knew they meant that for
+me, of course, and I felt very angry with them. They consoled me by
+saying that we should soon be at the Shoulder, and that it would not
+take long to reach the summit. I did not believe them and I said I
+should never do it. But when we got to the Shoulder I was glad. I knew
+many turned back at that point. We sat down to rest. The guides talked
+their own German, not one word of which I could understand, so turned
+from them and looked at the vast upper wedge of the Matterhorn. It
+glowed red in the morning sun; it was red hot, vast, ponderous, and yet
+the lower mountain held it up as lightly as an ashen shaft holds up a
+bronze spear-head. It was so wonderfully shaped that it did not look
+big. But it did look diabolic. There was some infernal wizardry of
+cloud-making going on about that spear-head. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> wind blew to us across
+the Zmutt Valley. Nevertheless, the wind above the Roof, as they call
+it, was blowing in every direction, and the live wisps of newborn cloud
+went in and out like the shuttles of a loom. I came to the conclusion
+that this was a particularly devilish, uncanny sort of show, and stared
+at it open-eyed. But I was comforted by the thought that the Pollingers
+were rapidly coming to the belief that this was not the sort of day to
+go any higher. I was quite angry when they declared we could do it
+easily. For I knew better, or my disturbed mind thought I did. This was
+the absolutely unknown to me, and their experience was nothing to my
+alarmed instincts. I was sure that my ancestors had lived on plains, and
+now I was dragging them into dangers that they knew nothing of.
+Nevertheless, I told the guides to go on. I spoke with a kind of eager
+interest and desperation. For, indeed, it was most appallingly
+interesting. We came to the slabs where the ropes made the Matterhorn so
+easy, as I had been told. I wished that some of those who believed this
+were with me.</p>
+
+<p>But with the fixed ropes to lay hold of I climbed fast. I relinquished
+such holds upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> solidity with reluctance. That yonder was the top, said
+my men, but for fully half a minute I declined to go any further. For it
+was quite obvious to me that I should never get down again. But again I
+shrugged my shoulders and went on. I might just as well do the whole
+thing. And sensation followed sensation. My mind was like a slow plate
+taking one photograph on top of the other. It was like wax, something
+new stamped out the last minute's impression. I heard my guides telling
+me that we must get to the summit because the people in Zermatt would be
+looking through telescopes. I did not care how many people looked
+through telescopes. So far as I was concerned the moon-men might be
+doing the same. I was one of three balancing fools on a rope.</p>
+
+<p>And then we came to the heavy snow on the little five-fold curving
+<i>ar&ecirc;te</i> that is the summit. Within a stone's throw of the top I declared
+again that I was quite high enough to satisfy me, but with a little more
+persuasion I went across the last three-foot ridge of snow, reached the
+top and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>The folks at Zermatt were staring, no doubt, but I had nothing to do
+with them. Let them look if they wished to. For it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> impossible to
+get to the top, and I was there. It was far more impossible to get down,
+and we were going to try. That was interesting. I had never been so
+interested before. For though I hoped we should succeed I did not think
+it likely. So I took in what I could, while I could, and stared at the
+visible anatomy of the Mischabel and the patina-stained floor of the
+white world with intense, yet aloof, interest. After a mere five
+minutes' rest we started on our ridiculous errand. But though I was as
+sure in my mind that we should not get down as I had been that we should
+not get up, there was an instant reversal of feeling. My instincts had
+been trying to prevent my ascending; they were eagerly bent on
+descending. I did not mind going down each difficult place, for I was
+going back into the known. Every step took me nearer the usual. I was
+going home to humanity. These mountains were cold company; they were
+indifferent. I was close up against cold original causes, which did not
+come to me mitigated and warmed by human contact or the breath of a
+city. I had had enough of them.</p>
+
+<p>There are gaps in my memory; strange lacun&aelig;. I remember the Roof, the
+slabs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> the big snow patch above the Shoulder. Much that comes between I
+know nothing of. But the snow-patch is burnt into my mind, for though it
+was but a hundred <i>m&egrave;tres</i> across it took us half-an-hour's slow care to
+get down it. Without the stakes set in it and the reserve rope it would
+have been almost impossible. It only gradually dawned on me that this
+care was needed to prevent the whole snow-field from coming away with
+us. I breathed again on rock. But the little <i>couloirs</i> that we had
+crossed coming up were now dangerous. I threw a handful of snow into
+several, and the snow that lay there quietly whispered, moved, rustled,
+hissed like snakes, and went away. But I could hardly realise that there
+was danger here or there. There was, of course, danger to come, yonder,
+round the corner of some rock. But the guides were very careful and a
+little anxious. It dawned on me, as I watched them with a set mind, that
+this was rather a bad day for the Matterhorn.</p>
+
+<p>The distances now seemed appalling. After hours of work I looked round
+and saw the wedge stand up just over me. It made me irritable. When, in
+the name of Heaven, were we coming to the upper hut? When we did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> at
+last get there I began to feel that by happy chance we might really
+reach Zermatt again after all.</p>
+
+<p>Once more I had vowed a thousand times that I would never climb again.
+But I know I shall, though I hardly know why. It is not that the fatigue
+is so good for the body that can endure it. Nor is it the mere sight of
+the wonders of Nature. The very thing that is terrifying is the
+attraction, for the unknown calls us always.</p>
+
+<p>But if there is a great pleasure, and a terrible pleasure, in coming
+into (and out of) the unknown, it is intensified by the fact that one is
+learning what is in one's self. It is a curious fact that writers seem
+to have done a great deal of climbing. Many of the first explorers among
+the higher Alps may not unjustly be classed among men of letters, and
+some of them, no doubt, went on a double errand. They learnt something
+of the unknown in two ways.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_INTERNATIONAL_SOCIALIST_CONGRESS" id="AN_INTERNATIONAL_SOCIALIST_CONGRESS"></a>AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS</h2>
+
+<p>All Zurich turned out to see the procession that was a mile long and
+overlapped, and went past double, going opposite ways, and the skies
+were blue as amethyst, and the lake was like the heavens, while
+underfoot the white dust lay thick until the growing, hurrying crowd
+sent it flying. All trades, with banners and bands and emblems, were
+represented; there were iron workers, tin workers, gardeners, women and
+children. One beautiful young girl in a cap of liberty waved a red
+banner to Freedom among the applause of thousands. For there were eight
+thousand in the procession, and the spectators were the half of this
+busy Canton making Sunday holiday. At the end of the procession we
+rested in the Cantonal Schulplatz, and Grealig spoke, and then Volders,
+the violent, strong-voiced Belgian, who called for <i>la lutte</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and
+looked most capable of fighting. He is now dead.</p>
+
+<p>And on the morrow, at the opening of the many-tongued Congress, the
+fighting and confusion began and lasted a long, long time. For after
+some usual business and congratulations the usual fight about the
+Anarchists commenced. It all turned on the invitation, which was worded
+in a broad way, so broad as to catch the English Trades Unions, who fear
+Socialism as they do the devil, and thus let in Anarchists claiming to
+represent trades become corporate by union.</p>
+
+<p>The long hall, decorated by Saint Marx and many flags, quickly filled
+with an incongruous mass of four hundred delegates, and the gallery were
+soon yelling. Bebel, who kept in the background and pulled the strings,
+proposed a limiting amendment about "political action" which the
+Anarchists maintained includes revolutionary force. This was the signal
+for the fight. Landauer, a German, young, long, thin and enthusiastic,
+made a fine speech in defence of the Anarchists. Then Mowbray of the
+English backed him up. I was then in the gallery and saw the mass surge
+here and there. Adler of the Austrians strove for peace with
+outstretched arms among the crowd, dividing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> angry and bitter men. But
+he was overborne and blows were struck. The Anarchists were expelled.
+Only one man was seriously hurt, but those thrown out were bitter at
+their expulsion, and on the morrow the row began again.</p>
+
+<p>On the platform were the president and vice-president, and the
+interpreters and others. These interpreters are mostly violent partisans
+and don't conceal it. A speech they like they deliver with real energy,
+rasping in the points. They are not above private interpretations; they
+were as liberal as Sir Thomas Urquhart when he translated Rabelais not
+in the interests of decency. When they hated a speaker they mangled and
+compressed him. There was a great uproar when Gillies, a German, but one
+of the English deputation, insisted on translating his first speech into
+German. The interpreters and others vowed he would make another and
+different one, but he stuck to his point and raised the very devil among
+the Germans of the Parliamentary Socialist party who wanted to dispute
+the Anarchist delegates' credentials and have them definitely "chucked."
+They howled and roared and shook their fists, and the French president
+shrieked for order. But at times his bell was a faint tinkle, like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+far sheep-bell on distant hills. He shouted unheard and looked in vain
+for a break. For the Germans were accused of meanness; it was simply a
+desire to keep out the younger, more open, most alive of the workers,
+those who admired not their methods and looked on them as they did on
+Eugene Richter.</p>
+
+<p>Then at last the English delegation, who as a body were in favour of
+turning the Anarchists out, rose and yelled for the closure, vowing they
+would leave until real business was reached if some decision wasn't come
+to; and that had some effect. The yells of "<i>Cl&ocirc;ture, cl&ocirc;ture!</i>"
+dominated all else, and it was finally voted among frantic disorder, the
+French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For
+on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning,
+for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians,
+and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans. So one delegate
+may equal a hundred; Servia and Bulgaria may outvote France; a solitary
+Russian hold ninety-two Germans in check.</p>
+
+<p>Before this they turned out a Polish girl with unsigned credentials. She
+made a good speech and was gallantly supported, but in the end failed.
+And when all the putting out was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> done there was an appeal for
+unanimity. No one laughed, however, and then Bebel came from behind with
+a proposal that seeing so much time had been wasted the articles of the
+agenda should be submitted to the various committees first. So this
+morning is a morning off and there is peace at anyrate among the mass of
+the delegates.</p>
+
+<p>In all this it is excessively easy to be unjust, to misjudge and to go
+wrong. The man who is ready with <i>&agrave; priori</i> opinions about all forms and
+means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he
+be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent
+nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent
+an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their
+mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole"
+they stand in the benches and protest again in acute screams. It is
+under extraordinary difficulties that the movement is being carried
+forward. Marx, when he started this internationalism, can hardly have
+recognised the supreme difficulties that the differing tongues alone
+offer to united action. In many a large assembly there is frequent
+misconception, but here are three main languages, and many of the
+delegates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> understand neither English, German nor French.</p>
+
+<p>And under the broad top currents of jealousy are the secret unmeasured
+tendencies of enmity or rivalry of ancient jealousy. To explain one
+man's vote we must remember that So-and-so threw a glass of absinthe in
+his face ten years ago in a Paris restaurant; that another was kicked in
+Soho; that another got work over the head of a friend.</p>
+
+<p>So the thing goes on, but whether their outlook be wide or narrow,
+personal or impersonal, they work in their way and something is really
+done.</p>
+
+<p>But for deadly earnestness commend me to the party with the unfortunate
+name of Anarchists. The party headed by Landauer and Werner issued
+invitations in the Tonhall&eacute; to the delegates and others, to come to the
+Kasino Aussersehl, where they would protest against the non-reception of
+their mandates. I went there with an English delegate. We entered a long
+hall with a stage and scenery at the end. All the tables were full of a
+very quiet crowd drinking most harmless red wine. I sat near Landauer.
+He is a very nervous, keen, eager young fellow, with the thin,
+well-marked eyebrows in a curve which perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> show the revolutionary or
+at the least the man in revolt. But his general aspect and that of his
+immediate friends and colleagues is extremely gentle and mild; this no
+one can help marking.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings began with a long speech by Werner and were continued by
+a Dutch journalist, who took the contrary side but was listened to with
+exemplary patience. He was controverted by Domela Niewenhuis, the leader
+of the Dutch, who looks a medi&aelig;val saint but speaks with great vigour
+and some humour.</p>
+
+<p>The most noticeable feature of this revolutionary meeting was its
+extreme peace and the great firmness with which every attempt at noise
+or interruption was put down. The only really violent speech made during
+the evening was by a fair Italian, who called the German Parliamentary
+Socialist "Borghesi" and recommended their immediate extinction by all
+means within the power of those who objected to their methods. Landauer,
+their revolutionary leader, spoke after him, and though greatly excited
+was not particularly violent. I talked with him the morning after and
+endeavoured to explain to him why the English workers were more
+conservative and more ready to trust to constitutional methods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> of
+enforcing their views. For it is the triple combination of long hours,
+low wages and militarism that makes the German violent and impatient of
+the slow order of change recommended by the Parliamentarians, who, so
+far, have done nothing.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AT_LAS_PALMAS" id="AT_LAS_PALMAS"></a>AT LAS PALMAS</h2>
+
+<p>On a map the Canary Islands look like seven irregular fish scales, and
+of these Grand Canary is a cycloid scale. For it is round and has deep
+folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle.
+Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder
+heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem
+to run to the centre. With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one
+could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first
+blush it seems when one lands at Las Palmas that one has come to the
+cinder and sand dumping ground of all the world, an enlarged edition of
+Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail.
+There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by
+daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery
+satellite of Grand Canary joined to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> the main island by an isthmus of
+yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust; dust flies in a ceaseless wind;
+unhappy palms by the roads are grey with dust; it would at first seem
+impossible to eat anything but an egg without getting one's teeth full
+of grit. And yet after all one sees that there are compensations in the
+sun. I said to a man who managed a big hotel, "This is a hideous place;"
+and he answered cheerfully, "Yes, isn't it?" And he added, "We have only
+got the climate." So might a man say, "I've not much ready money, but
+I've a million or two in Consols." I understood it by-and-by. And after
+all Las Palmas is not all the island, nor is its evil-mannered port. The
+country is a country of vines behind the sand and cinder ramparts of the
+city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the
+hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they
+bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet
+above the sea. They grow vines and sugar and cultivate the cochineal
+insect, which looks like a loathsome disease (as indeed it is) upon the
+swarth cactus or tunera which it feeds on. And the islands grow tobacco.
+Las Palmas is after all only the emporium of Grand Canary and a coaling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+station for steamers to South Africa and the West Coast and South
+America. It also takes invalids and turns out good work even among
+consumptives, for there is power in its sun and dry air.</p>
+
+<p>Its people are Spanish, but Spanish with a difference. The ancient
+Guanches, now utterly extinct as a people, have left traces of their
+blood and influence and character. Even now the poor Canary folk
+naturally live in caves. They dig a hole in a rock, or enlarge a hollow,
+and hang a sack before the hole, and, behold, they possess a house. Not
+fifty yards from the big old fort at the back of the town the cliffs are
+all full of people as a sandstone quarry is sometimes full of sand
+martins. The caves with doors pay taxes, it is said, but those with no
+more than a sack escape anything in the shape of a direct tax. To escape
+taxes altogether in any country under Spain is impossible. The <i>octroi</i>
+or <i>fielato</i> sees to that.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part Las Palmas to English people is no more than a
+sanatorium. They come to the Islands to get well and go away knowing as
+much of the people as they knew before. And indeed the climate is one
+that makes sitting in a big cane chair much easier than walking even a
+hundred yards. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> English for that matter do not trouble greatly
+about the customs or conditions of any foreigners. They <i>are</i>
+foreigners, Spaniards, strangers. It is easy to sit in the garden of a
+big hotel surrounded by one's own compatriots and ignore the fact that
+the Canary Islands do not belong to us. That they do not is perhaps a
+grievance of a sort. One is pleased to remember that Nelson made a bold
+attempt to take the city of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, even though he was
+wounded and failed. For no more surprising piece of audacity ever
+entered an English head. There was no more disgrace in his failing than
+there would be in failing to take the moon. And after all, some day, no
+doubt, the English will buy or steal a Canary Island. There is a
+lingering suspicion among us all that no island ought to belong to any
+other nation, unless indeed it is the United States. With an
+enterprising people these cinder heaps would be less heavily taxed and
+more prosperous. For the prosperity of Las Palmas itself is much a
+matter of coaling. And the islands have had commercial crisis after
+commercial crisis as wine rose in price and fell, as cochineal had its
+vain struggle with chemical dyes. Now its chief hold is the banana.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p><p>My first walk at Las Palmas was through the port to the Isleta. I went
+with a Scotchman who talked Spanish like a native and astounded two
+small boys who volunteered to guide us where no guide was needed. The
+begging, as in all Spanish places, is a pest, a nuisance, a very
+desolation. "Give a penny, give a penny," varied by a tremendous rise to
+"Give a shilling," is the cry of all the children. Among Spaniards it is
+no disgrace to beg. While in the cathedral one day two of us were
+surrounded by a gang of acolytes in their church dress who begged
+ceaselessly, unreproved by any priest. These two boys on the Isleta
+having met someone who spoke Spanish left us to our own devices after
+having received a penny. And we went on until we were stayed by
+sentries. For the Isleta is now a powerful fort. It was made so at the
+time of the Spanish-American War, and no strangers are allowed to see
+it. So we turned aside and walked miles by a barbed wire fence, among
+fired rocks and cinders, where never a blade of grass grew. The Isleta
+is the latest volcano in Grand Canary, and except in certain states of
+the atmosphere it is utterly and barrenly hideous. Only when one sees it
+from afar, when the sun is setting and the white sea is aflame, does it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+become beautiful. Certainly Las Palmas is not lovely.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there is one beauty at Las Palmas, a beauty that none of the
+natives can appreciate and few of the visitors ever see. It is a kind of
+beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful.
+There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a
+sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so
+keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the
+reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with
+sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes
+in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand,
+it owes its prosperity to it as well. Yet folks curse its great folded
+dunes, which by blocking the channel between the main island and the
+Isleta have created the sheltered Puerto de la Luz, where all its
+shipping lies in security from the great seas breaking in Confital Bay.
+These dunes rise two hundred feet at least, and for ever creep and shift
+and move in the draught of keen air blowing north and north-west. In the
+sunlight (and it is on them the sunlight seems most to fall) they shine
+sleekly and appear to have a certain pleasant and silky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> texture from
+afar. But as we walk towards them the light gets stronger, almost
+intolerably strong, and when one is among them they deceive the eye so
+that distances seem doubled. And they lie and move in the wind. Day
+after day I watched them, and walked upon them, and on no two days were
+they alike; their contours changed perpetually, changed beneath one's
+eyes like yellow drifting snow. They advanced in walls, and the leeward
+scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the
+sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the
+surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of
+the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in
+faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for
+clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk.
+Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from
+its bottom nothing was visible but the skyline and the sky. Again we saw
+over the blazing yellow ridge sudden white roofs of the Puerto and the
+masts of ships, and then a streak of blue more intense than ever because
+of the red yellow of the sand. And all the time the dunes moved, lived
+and marched south-east, while the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> sands rose up out of the sea of the
+windy bay and marched overland. The sand itself was very dry, very fine,
+so fine indeed that when it trickled through the fingers it felt like
+fine warm silk. No particle adhered to another. As I raked it through my
+fingers the sand ran in strange, enticing curves, each pouring stream
+finely lined, as if it was woven of curious fibres, making a wonderful
+design of interlacing columns. And deep beneath the surface it held the
+heat of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand
+pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet
+had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast;
+there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was
+alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an
+infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand
+came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again.
+The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life.
+Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a
+solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat
+in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was
+ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the
+curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were
+wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand
+spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a
+thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its
+own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand
+and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the
+left the hills above Ba&ntilde;odero and Guia are for the most part shadowy
+with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at
+their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the
+Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards
+Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam
+like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one's feet often lie Portuguese
+men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue,
+and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are.
+One whole day was greatly spoiled to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> me by handling one of them
+carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching
+finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my
+tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of
+young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty,
+nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne
+with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may
+survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's
+dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may
+indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of
+desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay
+there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific
+overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty
+and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las
+Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TERRACINA_ROAD" id="THE_TERRACINA_ROAD"></a>THE TERRACINA ROAD</h2>
+
+<p>Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by
+express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of
+the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the
+Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses
+the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of
+Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the
+past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs
+from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and
+Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the
+strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long
+Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they
+warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens.
+And To-day marches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> two and two in the stalwart figures of twin
+<i>carabinieri</i> upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some
+danger from brigands. These <i>carabinieri</i> (there are never less than two
+together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law
+is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax
+salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient
+Appian Way, made by Appius Claudius three centuries before the Christian
+era, there are many poor, and poor of a sullen mind, differing much from
+the laughter-loving <i>lazzaroni</i> of Naples. I saw many of them: they
+belonged still to a conquered Samnium. Or so it seemed to me.</p>
+
+<p>The train now runs from Rome to Velletri, and on to Terracina. The
+Sabine and Alban Mountains are upon the left soon after leaving the
+city. Further south are the Volscian Hills. Velletri is an old city of
+the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and
+the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all
+seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is
+visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the
+enchantress. One might imagine that her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> influence has not departed with
+her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes
+of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount
+Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands in the bay of Naples.
+Below, to the south-east, lies Terracina; on its high rock the arched
+ruins of the palace of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who conquered
+Odoacer and won Italy, ruling it with justice after he had slain Odoacer
+at Ravenna with his own hand.</p>
+
+<p>I got to Terracina late at night one January, and though I own that
+things past touch me with no such sense of sympathy as things yet to be,
+my heart beat a little faster as I drove in the darkness through this
+ancient Anxur, once a stronghold of the Volscians. Here too I left the
+railway and the southern road was before me. Terracina was touched with
+literary memories; Washington Irving had written about that very same
+old inn at Terracina to which I was going, that inn which poor deceived
+Baedeker called Grand Hotel Royal in small capitals. I was among the
+Volscians, in the Appian Way, in the country of brigands, with the
+spirit of Irving. And suddenly I drove across rough paving stones in the
+heavy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> shadows of vast corridors, and was greeted by a feeble and
+broken-down old landlord, who wished the noblest signor of them all, my
+undistinguished self, all good things. Poor Francia was the very spirit
+of a deserted landlord. I imagined that he might have remembered
+prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise
+robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His
+vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by
+candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and
+speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the
+best apartment in his house. We climbed stone staircases as one might
+climb the Pyramids, wandered on through resounding and ghostly
+corridors, and finally came to a room as vast as a quarry and almost as
+chilly as a catacomb. When he placed the candle on a cold slab of a
+table and withdrew with many bows I could have imagined myself a lost
+spirit. There was just sufficient light to see the darkness. The room
+was a kind of tragedy in itself; the floor was stone; a little bed in
+one far distant corner was only to be discovered by travel. It was a
+long walk to the window. Outside I saw white foam <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>breaking in the
+harbour now silted up and wholly useless.</p>
+
+<p>I dined that night in another hall which could have accommodated a
+hundred. I was lost in shadows. But then I was a shadow among shades.
+This was the past indeed, an ancient world. And after dinner, at last, I
+got a bath. It took me two hours to get it, and when it came it was
+nothing more than a great kettle for boiling fish in. I knew it was that
+by the smell. I rejected it for a basin which was almost as large as an
+English saucer for a breakfast cup. And then I slept. I felt that I was
+in a tomb, sleeping with my fathers. It was a kind of unexpected
+resurrection to wake and find daylight about me.</p>
+
+<p>I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took
+a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and
+the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids.
+Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at
+all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me
+to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my
+prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to
+Formia, where I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> should be once more in touch with the rail. I
+instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I
+knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian
+experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with
+the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an
+awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went
+out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and
+hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are
+making a bargain or <i>combinazione</i>. The old landlord brisked up
+wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded
+him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that
+he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large
+commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a
+traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood
+some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble
+gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The
+landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of
+which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> He suggested
+fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For
+an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to
+go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More
+than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They
+struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers.
+It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And
+finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then
+leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire
+and to give a <i>pourboire</i>. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old
+landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of
+pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his
+modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the
+Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.</p>
+
+<p>The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses&mdash;decent at anyrate
+for Italy&mdash;and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the
+railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange
+dream, such as might well come to one on a spot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> where ancient Rome, the
+age of the Goth, and medi&aelig;val Italy and modern times mingled. By the
+road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the
+ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the
+road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun
+shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine
+blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.</p>
+
+<p>Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded
+over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy,
+a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of
+brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great
+street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted
+not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to
+ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of
+the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the
+property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was
+attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object
+was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He
+failed but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the
+town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.</p>
+
+<p>We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was
+glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses
+climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is
+cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept
+down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a
+flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them.
+It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined medi&aelig;val
+fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into
+substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and
+pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was
+brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French
+Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the
+Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano
+to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and
+Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> head. Finally he
+was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the
+wildest legends of his career.</p>
+
+<p>And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a
+wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his
+own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign
+languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember
+nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that
+I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the <i>dazio
+consume</i>, the <i>octroi</i> post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's
+lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out
+before me.</p>
+
+<p>That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet
+sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as
+chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I
+wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a
+fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night,
+chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful
+little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills;
+on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates;
+there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the
+Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the
+terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can
+see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola
+facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged
+to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little
+baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel
+dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck
+followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight
+or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would
+inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was
+surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor,
+so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who
+could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They
+were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the
+stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and
+to their disappointment, yet to their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> immense delight, for the Italian
+admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into
+laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with
+laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his
+lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly,
+"Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the
+hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of
+mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for
+once.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_SNOW-GRIND" id="A_SNOW-GRIND"></a>A SNOW-GRIND</h2>
+
+<p>Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has
+been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing
+is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as
+something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most
+mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been
+written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even
+surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier
+than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration
+has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as
+inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine
+author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for
+the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say
+that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> so far as to say that it
+is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the
+snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes
+intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is
+perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be
+got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were
+wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would
+take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There
+are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the
+upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are
+deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he
+hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.</p>
+
+<p>And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I
+do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is
+not in man to endure such. He <i>will</i> do everything that can be done by
+endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction
+that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb
+and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling
+that comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how
+far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always
+doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts
+Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself
+are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He
+only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might
+call impossible.</p>
+
+<p>But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to
+preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more
+than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do
+but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the
+plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will
+take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with
+them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.</p>
+
+<p>The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas
+Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as
+mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly
+be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as
+fast as any but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an
+excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I
+was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not
+one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try
+one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay
+and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange
+that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a
+condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and
+wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was
+anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the
+edge of a precipice about matters of mountain &aelig;sthetics.</p>
+
+<p>We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which
+is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for
+Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close
+pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would
+be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after
+all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us
+say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> feet in the Alps is a
+mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For
+early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the
+most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which
+does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly
+grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of
+them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are
+many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning
+after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But,
+nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one
+stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single
+candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I
+swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me
+that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than
+Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my
+own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a
+human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After
+drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage
+and found O&mdash;&mdash; sitting on the stairs putting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> his boots on. He too was
+silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off
+camp before dawn. When O&mdash;&mdash; had finished his breakfast we found the
+guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two
+o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough
+but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we
+got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view
+of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and
+equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the
+most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own
+folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.</p>
+
+<p>It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose
+opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted
+by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn
+had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides
+said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that
+two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their
+lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the
+great ice river of the Gorner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Glacier we saw other and nearer and
+brighter lanterns going from the B&eacute;temps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One
+party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew
+that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the
+vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We
+seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies
+crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon
+the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was
+beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all
+of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the
+Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call
+beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the
+Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty
+red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the
+scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and
+non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality
+to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems
+alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite
+alone. The human water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea
+was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at
+night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of
+avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun
+is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents.
+And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is
+cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is
+swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another
+world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.</p>
+
+<p>Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track
+branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice,
+and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base
+of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides
+are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The
+two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by
+all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as
+strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and
+ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged
+guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in
+knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di
+Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like.
+For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with
+putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I
+fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was
+not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task,
+the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers
+have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.</p>
+
+<p>Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses
+not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long
+snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore
+and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the
+mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters
+not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little
+real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> the
+feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of
+anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be
+read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have
+their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the
+snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and
+peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our
+left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the
+real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the
+Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its
+name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be
+like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which
+was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte
+Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the
+ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux.
+And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was
+beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the
+vast plains of <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> with their glare and their infinite infernal
+monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> the shining white
+world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for
+human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very
+far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is
+little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as
+we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to
+rest, and I fought with my friend O&mdash;&mdash; about the beauty of the
+mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real
+loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting
+that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a
+thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.</p>
+
+<p>And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the
+snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the
+steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga.
+We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to
+the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I
+own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my
+soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat
+agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p><p>And yet below us was the other side of our pass, which certainly looked
+more interesting. Right under our feet was a little snow <i>ar&ecirc;te</i> with
+slopes like a high pitched roof. It was quite possible to be killed
+there if one was foolish or reckless, and the prospect cheered me up. It
+is at anyrate not dull to be on an <i>ar&ecirc;te</i> with a snow slope leading to
+nothing beneath me. And I cannot help insisting on the fact that much
+mountaineering is essentially dull. Often enough a long day may be
+without more than one dramatic moment. There is really only five minutes
+of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the
+<i>ar&ecirc;te</i>, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to
+the left and came to the <i>bergschrund</i>, the big crevasse which separates
+the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious
+that the guides should find the <i>schrund</i> difficult. I had been bored to
+death and yearned for some little excitement. I even declared sulkily
+(it is odd, but true, that one does often become reckless and sulky
+under such circumstances) that I was ready to jump "any beastly
+<i>bergschrund</i>." My offer was no doubt made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> with the comfortable
+consciousness that the guides were not likely to let me do anything
+quite idiotic. But there was no necessity for any such gymnastics. The
+<i>schrund's</i> lower lip was only six feet lower than the upper lip, and
+the whole crevasse was barely three feet across, though doubtless deep
+enough to swallow a thousand parties like ours. Somewhat to my
+disappointment we got over quite easily, and struck down across the
+glacier, passing one or two rather dangerous crevasses by crawling on
+our stomachs. The only satisfaction I had was that both the guides and
+O&mdash;&mdash; declared that the way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas
+it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told
+them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an
+accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in
+the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood
+on the steep <i>d&eacute;bris</i> slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the
+zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake,
+and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had
+lunch, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> I and O&mdash;&mdash; once more fought over the glacier of the upper
+snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on &aelig;sthetic or
+gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-F&eacute;e
+till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I
+get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel
+in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I
+declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the
+Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or
+to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does
+not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of labour.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ACROSS_THE_BIDASSOA" id="ACROSS_THE_BIDASSOA"></a>ACROSS THE BIDASSOA</h2>
+
+<p>I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and
+the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east
+wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I
+discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick
+mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English
+Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped
+for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them,
+though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great
+city of sad inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>The desolation of the Landes is an ordered, a commercial desolation.
+Once the whole surface of the district bore nothing but a scanty
+herbage. The soil is sand and an iron cement, or "hard-pan," below the
+sand. Here uncounted millions of slender sea-pines cover the plain; they
+stand in serried rows, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> regular as a hop-garden, gloomy and without
+the sweet wildness of nature. And every pine is bitterly scarred, so
+that it may bleed its gum for traders. When the plantations are near
+their full growth they are cut down, stacked to season slowly, and the
+trees finish their existence as mine timbers deep under the earth.</p>
+
+<p>After seventy miles of a southward run there are signs that the Landes
+are not so everlasting and spacious as they seem. To the south-east, at
+Buglose, where St Vincent de Paul was born, the Pyrenees show far and
+faint and blue on the horizon. And then suddenly the River Adour
+appears, and a country which was English. Dax was ours for centuries,
+and so was Bayonne, whose modern citadel has had a rare fate for any
+place of strength. It has never been taken; not even Wellington and his
+Peninsular veterans set foot within its bastions.</p>
+
+<p>This is the country of the Basques, that strange, persistent race of
+which nothing is known. Their history is more covered by ancient clouds
+than that of the Celts; their tongue has no cousin in the world, though
+in structure it is like that of the North-American Indians. I met some
+of them later, but so far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> know no more than two words of their
+language.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was cool at St Jean de Luz, but the sun was bright and the sea
+thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and
+south are the Pyrenees&mdash;lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in
+outline. The dominant peak, being the first of the chain, is Larhune (a
+Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel
+held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and
+across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel,
+beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of
+Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of
+the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the
+dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the
+land. To the northward, but out of sight, lies windy Biarritz; to the
+south is blood-stained, battered and renewed San Sebastian, a name that
+recalls many deeds of heroism and many of shame. The horrors of its
+siege and taking might make one cold even in sunlight. But between us
+and its new city lies the Bidassoa. Here, at St Jean de Luz, is the
+Nivelle flowing past Ciboure. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> river was once familiar to us in
+despatches. The whole country even yet smells of ancient war. For here
+lies the great western road to Spain. And more than once it has been the
+road to Paris. It is a path of rising and falling empire.</p>
+
+<p>During my few days at St Jean de Luz I had foregathered with some exiled
+friends, walked to quiet Ascain, and regretted I lacked the time even to
+attain the summit of so small a mountain as Larhune, and then, desiring
+for once to set foot in Spain, took train to Hendaye. This is the last
+town in France. Across the Bidassoa rose the quaint roofs and towers of
+old Fuentarabia, the Fontarabie of the French. I hired an eager Basque
+to row me across the river, then running seaward at the last of the ebb.</p>
+
+<p>The day was splendid and mild. There was no cloud in the sky, not a
+wreath of mist upon the mountains. The river was a blue that verged on
+green; its broad sand glowed golden in the sun; to seaward the
+amethystine waters of the Atlantic heaved and glittered. On the far
+cliffs they burst in lifting spray. The hills wore the fine faint blue
+of atmosphere; the wind was very quiet. This seemed at last like peace.
+I let my hands feel the cool waters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> of the river and soaked my soul in
+the waters of peace.</p>
+
+<p>And yet my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me
+with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he
+had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish
+and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how
+to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists in
+buying interested civility as well as help or transport with an extra
+fifty centimes is indeed but a wise and calculated waste. It occurred to
+me that he might solve a question that puzzled me. Were the Basques
+united as a race, or were their sympathies French or Spanish? After
+considering how I should put it, I said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mon ami, est-ce que vous &ecirc;tes plus Basque que Fran&ccedil;ais, ou plus
+Fran&ccedil;ais que Basque?"</p>
+
+<p>He taught me a lesson in simple psychology, for he stopped poling and
+stared at me for a long minute. Then he scratched his head and a light
+came into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mais, monsieur, je suis un Basque Fran&ccedil;ais!"</p>
+
+<p>My fine distinction was beyond him, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> it took me not a little
+indirect questioning to discover that he was certainly more French than
+Basque. He presently denounced the Spanish Basques in good round terms,
+and incidentally showed me that there must be a very considerable
+difference in their respective dialects. For he complained that the
+Spanish Basques spoke so fast that it was hard to understand them.</p>
+
+<p>He put me ashore at last on a mud flat and accompanied me to the Fonda
+Miramar, where a bright and pretty waitress hurried, after the fashion
+of Spaniards, to such an extent that she got me a simple lunch in no
+more than half an hour. My Spanish is far worse even than my French, but
+in spite of that we carried on an animated conversation in French and
+English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and
+Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I
+thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the
+deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque
+myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had
+never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was
+a sore point with me. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> assured her of the shameful fact that the
+English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had
+some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England.
+As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to
+the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great
+excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now
+well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the news I
+had brought, I went out with my boatman to view the old town. I found it
+quaint and individual and lovely.</p>
+
+<p>A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and
+essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the
+upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the
+Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in
+England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the
+Bidassoa. I stood upon the roof of the old ruined palace of Charles Le
+Quint, and on every point of the compass the view had most peculiar and
+wonderful qualities. Beneath me was the increasing flood of the frontier
+river:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> at my very feet lay the narrow and picturesque street ca&ntilde;ons of
+the ancient town; to the south was Irun in the shelter and shadow of the
+mountains; east-south-east rose the pyramidal summit of Larhune; the
+west was the sharp ridge of the brown Jaisquivel which hid San
+Sebastian; to the north was the rolling Bay; and right to the south the
+triple crown of Las Tres Coronas cut the sky sharply. Right opposite me
+Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I
+can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of
+mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot
+in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen.</p>
+
+<p>But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia. Peace lay over its
+dark homes and within its ancient walls.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ON_A_VOLCANIC_PEAK" id="ON_A_VOLCANIC_PEAK"></a>ON A VOLCANIC PEAK</h2>
+
+<p>I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any
+volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de
+Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches
+of the Canary Islands.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt,
+and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes
+of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge
+of the crater was of white fired rock; inside the cup the hollow was
+sulphur yellow. Puffs of smoke came from cracks. I dropped out of the
+wind and warmed myself at the fire. I picked up warm stones and danced
+them from one hand to another. And overhead a wind of ice howled. For
+the Peak is twelve thousand feet and more above the sea. An hour before
+I had been cutting steps in the last slopes of the last ash cone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> of the
+volcano which still lives and may burst into activity at any fatal
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>To stand upon the Peak and look down upon the world and the sea gives
+one a great notion of the making of things. Once the world was a
+crucible. The islands are all volcanic, all ash and cinders, lava and
+pumice. But I perceived that the Peak itself, the final peak, the last
+five thousand feet of it, was but the last result of a dying fire&mdash;a
+mere gas spurt to what had been. The whole anatomy of the island is laid
+bare; the history and the growth of the peak are written in letters of
+lava, in wastes of pumice and fire-scarred walls. The plain of the
+Ca&ntilde;adas lies beneath me, and is ten miles across. This was the ancient
+crater; it is as big as the crater of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands.
+But Kilauea is yet truly alive, a sea of lava with many cones spouting
+lava. Such was the crater of Teneriffe before the last peak rose within
+its basin. Now retama, a hardy bitter shrub, grows in these plains of
+pumice; the flats of it are pumice and rapilli, white and brown. But the
+ancient crater walls stand unbroken for miles, though here and there
+they have been swept away, some say by floods of water belched from the
+pit.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p><p>From the last ash-peak of fire, as I stood on the crater walls in smoke
+and a cold wind, I saw no sign of Teneriffe's fertility. The works of
+man upon the lower slopes below the pi&ntilde;on forests were invisible. The
+slopes by Orotava lay under cloud, the sea was hidden almost to its
+horizon by a vast plain of heaving mist. All I could see plainly was the
+old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls
+and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But
+though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay
+behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping,
+suffocating fish in drying mud. Its crater opened like a mouth and
+around it lesser holes gaped. On the plain of the old crater there rise
+two separate volcanoes&mdash;one, the true peak, rising 5000 feet from the
+Ca&ntilde;ada floor (itself 7000 feet above the sea), and Chahorra, nearly
+4000. But so vast is the ancient crater that these two peaks, one yet
+alive and the other dead, seem but blisters or boils upon its barren
+plain. To the north, miles from the edge of my peak, I could see the
+crater cliff rise red. To the west and east the wall has broken down,
+but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> scarred into
+chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the
+east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one
+follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies
+under these cliffs, looking like a beach. Once perhaps the crater was
+level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken
+down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood.</p>
+
+<p>None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were
+truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a
+last great eruption. Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for
+thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde.
+At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times,
+the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava
+into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it
+stands is the work of two periods of activity at least. The first great
+slope ends at another flat called the Rambleta. Here was once an ancient
+crater. Then the fires quietened, and there was a time of lesser
+activity. It woke again, and threw up the last weary ash-cone of a
+thousand feet or near it.</p>
+
+<p>All things die, but who shall say when a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> volcano has done its worst? A
+quiet Vesuvius slew its thousands: Etna its tens of thousands. Some day
+perhaps Teneriffe will wake again, either in earthquakes or lava-flow,
+and cause a Casamicciola or a Catania. The cones over against Garachico
+seemed much alive to me, and had I not warmed frozen hands at the very
+earth fires themselves? I broke out hot sulphur with the pick of my
+ice-axe. Icod of the Vines, or Orotava itself, port and villa, might
+some day wake to such a day as that which has smitten St Pierre in fiery
+Martinique.</p>
+
+<p>Once all the quiet seas were unbroken by their seven islands&mdash;Hierro,
+Palma, Gomera, Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote lay
+beneath the waters of the smiling ocean. Even now they smell of fire and
+the furnace; in the most fruitful vineyards of Grand Canary the soil is
+half cinders. In all the islands vast cinder heaps rise black and
+forbidding. Lava streams, in which the poisonous euphorbia alone can
+grow, thrust themselves like great dykes among fertile lands. The very
+sands of the sea are powdered pumice and black volcanic dust. One of the
+greatest craters of the world holds within itself great parts of wooded
+Palma. On dead volcanoes are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> the petty batteries of Spain over against
+Las Palmas. There is something strange and almost pathetic in the
+thought of guns raised where Nature once thundered dreadfully in the
+barren sunlit Isleta.</p>
+
+<p>But of all the islands and of all parts of them, the Peak, shining over
+clouds and visible from far seas, is the king and chief. I left its
+fiery summit with a certain reluctance. It attracted me strangely. It
+represented, feebly enough, I daresay, the greatest of all elemental
+forces. Yet its faint fires and its smoke and sulphur fumes had all the
+power of a mighty symbol. By such means, by such a formula, had the very
+world itself been made. Though snow lay upon its slopes and ice bound
+ancient blocks of lava together, it might at any hour awake again and
+renew the terrors which once must have floated over the seas in a gust of flame.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SHEEP_AND_SHEEP-HERDING" id="SHEEP_AND_SHEEP-HERDING"></a>SHEEP AND SHEEP-HERDING</h2>
+
+<p>With the introduction of fences, which are now coming in with tremendous
+rapidity, sheep-herding as an art is inevitably doomed. When I knew
+north-west Texas a few years ago there was not a fence between the Rio
+Grande and the north of the Panhandle, but now barbed or plain wire is
+the rule, and in the pastures it is, of course, not so necessary to look
+after the sheep by day and night. In Australia I have not seen those
+under my charge for a week or more at a time. While there was water in
+the paddock I never even troubled to hunt them up in the hundred square
+miles of grey-green plain with its rare clumps of dwarf box. If dingoes
+were reported to be about I kept my eyes open, of course, but they were
+very rare in the Lachlan back blocks, and I was never able to earn the
+five shillings reward for the tail of this yellow marauder. But in Texas
+there are more wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> animals&mdash;the coyote, the bear, the "panther" or
+puma&mdash;and it is impossible to leave the sheep entirely to their own
+devices, even in pastures which prevent them wandering. Nevertheless,
+looking after them on fenced land is very different from being with them
+daily and hourly, sleeping with them at night, following and directing
+them by day, being all the time wary lest some should be divided from
+the main flock by accident, or lest the whole body should spy another
+sheep-owner's band and rush tumultuously into it.</p>
+
+<p>But the new and unaccustomed shepherd on the prairie is apt to give
+himself much unnecessary trouble. It takes some time to learn that a
+flock of sheep is like a loosely-knit organism which will not separate
+or divide if it can help it. It might be compared with a low kind of
+jelly-fish, or even to a sea-anemone, for under favourable conditions of
+sun and sky it spreads out to feed, leaving between each of its members
+what is practically a constant distance. For when the weather changes
+they come closer together, and any alarm puts them into a compact mass.
+I have heard a gun fired unexpectedly, and then seen some 2000 sheep,
+spreading loosely over an irregular circle, about half a mile in
+diameter, rush for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> common centre with an infallible instinct. And
+then they gradually spread out again like that same sea-anemone putting
+forth its filaments after being touched.</p>
+
+<p>The new shepherd, however, is in constant dread lest they should
+separate and divide so greatly that he will lose control of them. I have
+walked many useless miles endeavouring to keep a flock within unnatural
+limits before I discovered that they never went more than a certain
+distance from the centre. And this distance varied strictly with the
+numbers. At night time they begin to draw together, and if they are not
+put in a corral or fold will at last lie down in a fairly compact mass,
+remaining quiet, if undisturbed, until the approach of dawn. But if they
+have had a bad day for feeding they sometimes get up when the moon rises
+and begin to graze. Then the shepherd may wake up, and, finding he is
+alone, have to hunt for them. As they usually feed with their heads up
+wind it is not as a rule hard to discover them. If the moon is covered
+by a cloudy sky they will often camp down again.</p>
+
+<p>The hardest days for the shepherd are cold ones, when it blows strongly.
+For then the sheep travel at a great pace, and will not go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> quietly
+until the sun comes out of the grey sky of the chilly norther, which
+perhaps moderates towards noon. But in such weather they do not care to
+camp at noonday, and instead of spreading they will travel onward and
+onward. They doubtless feel uncomfortable and restless. After such a day
+they are uneasy at night, especially when there is a moon.</p>
+
+<p>It is my opinion, after experience of both conditions, that unherded
+sheep do much better than those which are closely looked after. In
+Australia our percentage of lambs was sometimes 104, and any squatter
+would think something wrong if his sheep on the plain yielded less than
+90 per cent. increase. But in Texas, where the mothers are watched and
+helped, the increase is seldom indeed 75 in the 100, much oftener it is
+60. I used to wonder whether the losses by wild animals would have
+equalled the loss of 25 per cent. increase which is, I believe, entirely
+due to the care taken of them. For herding is essentially a worrying
+process, even when practised by a man who understands sheep well. The
+mothers are never left alone, and must be driven to a corral at night.
+Consequently they often get separated from their lambs before they come
+to know them, and one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> the most pitiful things seen by a shepherd is
+the poor distracted ewe refusing to recognise her own offspring even
+when it is shown to her. We used in such cases to put them together in a
+little pen during the night, hoping that she would "own" it by the
+morning. But very often she would not, and then the lamb usually died.
+If, indeed, it was one of a more sturdy constitution than most, it would
+refuse to die and became a kind of Ishmael in the flock. The milk which
+was necessary it took, or tried to take, from the ewe, who, for just a
+moment, might not know a stranger was trying to share the right of her
+own lamb. Such an orphan rarely grows up, and most of them die quickly,
+as they are knocked about and cruelly used by those who take no interest
+in the disinherited outcast of that selfish ovine society. And yet its
+real mother is in the flock, reconciled to her loss after a few days of
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of my present very decided disinclination to have anything to
+do with sheep, they are, like every other animal, very interesting when
+closely studied. I spent some years in their society in New South Wales
+and know a little about them. Shortly before I left Ennis Creek ranch in
+North-west Texas a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> very curious incident occurred, which I could never
+quite satisfactorily explain, for I believe the most serious fright I
+have ever had in all my life was caused by these same inoffensive,
+innocent quadrupeds. It was not inflicted on me by a ram, which is
+occasionally bellicose, but by ewes with their lambs, and I distinctly
+remember being as surprised as if the sky had fallen or something
+utterly opposed to all causation had confronted me. I want to meet a
+man, even of approved courage, who would not be shocked into fair fright
+by having half-a-dozen ewes suddenly turn and charge him with the fury
+of a bullock's mad onset. Would he not gasp, be stricken dumb, and look
+wide-eyed at the customary nature about him, just as if they had broken
+into awful speech? I imagine he would, for I know that it shook my
+nerves for an hour afterwards, even though I had by that time recovered
+sufficient courage to experiment on them in order to see if the same
+result would again follow. I had about 500 ewes and lambs under my care.
+The day was warm, though the wind was blowing strongly, and when noon
+approached the flock travelled but slowly towards the place where I
+wished them to make their mid-day camp. To urge them on I took a large
+bandana <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>handkerchief and flicked the nearest to me with it as I walked
+behind. As I did so the wind blew it strongly, and it suddenly occurred
+to me to make a sort of a flag of it in order to see if it would
+frighten them. I took hold of two corners and held it over my head, so
+that it might blow out to its full extent. Now, whether it was due to
+the glaring colour, or the strange attitude, or to the snapping of the
+outer edge of the handkerchief in the wind&mdash;and I think it was the
+last&mdash;I cannot say, but the hindmost ewes suddenly stopped, turned
+round, eyed me wildly, and then half-a-dozen made a desperate charge,
+struck me on the legs, threw me over, and fled precipitately as I fell.
+It was a reversal of experience too unexpected! I lay awhile and looked
+at things, expecting to see the sun blue at the least, and then I
+gathered myself together slowly. In all seriousness I was never so taken
+aback in all my life, and I was almost prepared for a ewe's biting me. I
+remembered the Australian story of the rich squatter catching a man
+killing one of his sheep. "What are you doing that for?" he inquired as
+a preliminary to requesting his company home until the police could be
+sent for. The questioned one looked up and answered coolly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> though not,
+I imagine, without a twinkle in his eye, "Kill it! Why am I killing it?
+Look here, my friend, I'll kill any man's sheep as bites <i>me</i>." For my
+part, I don't think biting would have alarmed me more. After that I made
+experiments on the ewes, and always found that the flying bandana simply
+frightened them into utter desperation when nothing else would. It was a
+long time before they got used to it. I should like to know if any other
+sheep-herders ever had the same experience at home or abroad.</p>
+
+<p>In another book I spoke of lambs when they were very young taking my
+horse for their mother. This was in California; but in Texas I have
+often seen them run after a bullock or steer. One day on the prairie a
+lamb had been born during camping-time, and when it was about two hours
+old a small band of cattle came down to drink at the spring. Among these
+was a very big steer, with horns nearly a yard long, who came close to
+the mother, just then engaged in cleaning her offspring. She ran off,
+bleating for her lamb to follow. The little chap, however, came to the
+conclusion that the steer was calling it, and went tottering up to the
+huge animal, that towered above him like the side of a ca&ntilde;on, apparently
+much to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> the latter's embarrassment. The steer eyed it carefully, and
+lifted his legs out of the way as the lamb ran against them, even
+backing a little, as if as surprised as I had been when the ewes
+assaulted me. Then all of a sudden he shook his head as if laughing, put
+one horn under the lamb, threw it about six feet over his back, and
+calmly walked on. I took it for granted that the unwary lamb was dead,
+but on going up I found it only stunned, and, being as yet all gristle,
+it soon recovered sufficiently to acknowledge its real mother, who had
+witnessed its sudden elevation, stamping with fear and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Sheep-herding is supposed, by those who have never followed it, to be an
+easy, idle, lazy way of procuring a livelihood; but no man who knows as
+much of their ways as I do will think that. It is true that there are
+times when there is little or nothing to be done&mdash;when a man can sit
+under a tree quietly and think of all the world save his own particular
+charge; but for the most part, if he have a conscience, he will feel a
+burden of responsibility upon him which of itself, independently of the
+work he may have to do, will earn him his little monthly wage of twenty
+dollars and the rough ranch food of "hog and hominy." For there is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+ceasing of labour for the Texas herder of the plains; Sunday and
+week-day alike the dawning sun should see him with his flock, and even
+at night he is still with them as they are "bedded out" in the open.
+Even if he can "corral" them in a rough sort of yard, some slinking
+coyote may come by and scare them into breaking bounds; and when they
+are not corralled the bright moon may entice them to feed quietly
+against the wind, until at last the herder wakes to find his charge has
+vanished and must be anxiously sought for. In Australia, as I have said,
+the sheep are left to their own devices for the greater part of the
+year, unless there should be unusual scarcity of water; but even there,
+to have charge of so many thousand animals, and so many miles of
+fencing, makes it no enviable task, while the labour, when it does come,
+is hard and unremitting. In New South Wales I have often been eighteen
+and twenty hours in the saddle, and have reached home at last so wearied
+out that I could scarcely dismount. One day I used up three horses and
+covered over ninety miles, more than fifty of it at a hard canter or
+gallop&mdash;and if that be not work I should like to know what is. This,
+too, goes on day after day during shearing, just when the days are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+growing hot and hotter still, the spare herbage browning, and the water
+becoming scanty and scantier. And for a recompense? There is none in
+working with sheep. They are quiet, peaceable, stupid, illogical,
+incapable of exciting affection, very capable of rousing wrath; far
+different from the terrible excitement of a bellowing herd of
+long-horned cattle as they break away in a stampede, among whom is
+danger and sudden death and the glory of motion and conquest; or with
+horses thundering over the plain in hundreds, like a riderless squadron
+shaking the ground with waving manes, long flowing tails, and flashing
+eyeballs, whom one can love and delight in, and shout to with a strange,
+vivid joy that sends the blood tingling to the heart and brain. Were I
+to go back to such a life I would choose the danger, and be discontented
+to maunder on behind the slow and harmless wool-bearers, cursing a
+little every now and again at their foolishness, and then plodding on
+once more, bunched up in an inert mass on a slow-going horse, who
+wearily stretches his neck almost to the ground as he dreams, perhaps,
+of the long, exhilarating gallops after his own kind that we once had
+together, being conscious, I daresay, of the contemptuous pity I feel
+for the slow <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>foredoomed muttons that crawl before us on the long and
+weary plain.</p>
+
+<p>It is highly probable that the introduction of fences will have its
+effect in other ways than in increasing the number of lambs born and
+reared. Sheep-herding will almost disappear when the wild beasts of
+Texas are extinct, as they soon will be, for a fenced country is very
+unfit for such animals. But then the natural glory of the wide open
+prairie will be gone, and civilisation will gradually destroy all that
+was so delightful, even when my sheep, by worrying me, taught me what I
+have here set down.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="RAILROAD_WARS" id="RAILROAD_WARS"></a>RAILROAD WARS</h2>
+
+<p>Everybody nowadays has some notion of the way the railroad business of
+America is carried on. They know that there are too many roads for the
+traffic, and that, to prevent a general ruin, the managers combine, pay
+the profits into the hands of a receiver, and receive again from him a
+certain agreed proportion of the whole sum. But this method of "pooling"
+the profits is sometimes unsatisfactory. One line will think it gets too
+little if the fluctuations of trade send more freight over its rails
+than it formerly had, and will demand a greater proportion of the gross
+profits. This demand may be granted, but if not, the agreement may break
+down, and the discontented railroad go to work on the old principle of
+every man for himself. This very likely inaugurates a war of tariffs;
+fares and freights go down slowly or quickly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> according as the quarrel
+is open or secret, until one or other of the parties gives in to avoid
+complete ruin.</p>
+
+<p>While I was living in San Francisco, early in 1886, there was an open
+war between all the lines west of Chicago and Kansas City, including the
+Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande, the
+Southern Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa F&eacute;. Fares to New
+York and the Atlantic seaboard came tumbling down by $10 at a fall. The
+usual rate from New York to San Francisco is $72. It fell to 60, to 50,
+40, 30, to 25, to 22. All the railroad offices had great placards
+outside inviting everyone to go East at once, for they would never get
+such a chance again. Some of the notices were very odd. One began with
+"Blood, blood, blood!" and another had a hand holding a bowie knife,
+with the legend "Here we cut deep!" And, as I have said, they did cut
+deep, for at the end one might go to New York for about $18. Now this
+$18 went in a lump to the railroad east of Chicago. Consequently the
+passengers were carried over 2000 miles for nothing. Frequently during
+two days men were booked to Chicago or Kansas City<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> from San Francisco
+or Los Angeles for $1. Two thousand miles for 4s. 2d!</p>
+
+<p>Such a state of things could not last, but while it did it gave rise to
+much speculation. Many men bought up tickets, good for some time,
+believing the bottom prices had been reached when the fall had by no
+means ended. It was odd to stand outside an office and listen to the
+crowd. Some would hold on and say, "I'll chance it till to-morrow." Then
+I have seen an agent come outside and say, "Gentlemen, now's your time
+to go east and visit your families. Don't delay. Of course fares may
+fall further, but I think not. Don't be too greedy. You are not likely
+to get the chance again of going home for twenty-five dollars." They did
+fall further, but recovered again on the rumour of negotiations
+beginning between the competing lines. When that was contradicted they
+fell again. Suddenly, without any warning, they jumped up to normal
+rates, and left many of the outside public&mdash;the bears, so to
+speak&mdash;lamenting that they had not taken the opportunity so eloquently
+pointed out by the oratorical agents on the sidewalk by the offices. For
+the placards and pictures came down at once,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> and to an inquirer who
+asked, "What can you do New York at?" the answer was, "Why, sir, the
+usual rate&mdash;$72."</p>
+
+<p>To an Englishman who has not travelled in the States and become familiar
+with the methods employed there by business men, it seems odd that
+anyone should chaffer with the clerk at a ticket-office. What would an
+English booking-clerk say if he were asked about the fare to some place,
+and, on replying &pound;1, received the rejoinder, "I'll give you 15s?" He
+would think the man a joker of a very feeble description. Yet this may
+often be done in Western America. Even when there is no "war" the agents
+have a certain margin to veer and haul on in their commission, and will
+often knock off a little sooner than allow a rival line to get the
+passenger. Besides, it frequently happens that there may be a secret
+cutting of rates without an open war. My own experience, when I came
+down from Sonoma County in the autumn of 1886, meaning to return to
+England, will give a very good notion of this, and of the way to get a
+cheap ticket when there is the trouble among the companies which may end
+in a war, or be patched up by arbitration.</p>
+
+<p>It had been said in the papers for some time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> that rate-cutting was
+going on in San Francisco, and this made me hurry down not to lose the
+opportunity. The morning after my arrival I walked into an office in
+Kearney Street and said briefly, "What are you doing to New York?" The
+clerk said in a business way, "Seventy-two dollars." I laughed a little
+and looked at him straight without speaking. "Hum," said he; "well, you
+can go for sixty-five." "Thanks," I said, "it isn't enough." I walked
+out, and though he called me back I would not return. Then I went to Mr
+P., a well-known agent for railroads and steamships. To use a vulgarism,
+he did not open his mouth so wide as the other, but at once offered me a
+through ticket to Liverpool for $72. I thanked him and said I would call
+again. Deducting the $12 for a steerage passage, his railroad fare was
+$60. So far I had knocked off 12. And now it began to rain very hard. It
+did not cease all day. And my day's work was only begun, for it was only
+ten o'clock then. I went from one office to another, quoting one's rates
+here and another's there, and slowly I dropped the fare to fifty. I had
+to explain to some of these men that I was not a fool, and that I knew
+what I was doing; that if they took me for a "tenderfoot," or a
+"sucker,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> they were mistaken. My explanations always had an effect, and
+down the fare tumbled. At last, about three o'clock, I had got things to
+a very fine point, and was working two rival offices which stood side by
+side near the Palace Hotel. One man&mdash;Mr A., whom I knew by name, who
+indeed knew a friend of mine&mdash;offered me $45. I shook my head, and going
+next door, Mr V. made it a dollar less. It took me half-an-hour to
+reduce that again to forty-three; but at last Mr A., who was as much
+interested in this little game as if I were a big stake at poker, went
+suddenly down to $41. I offered to toss him whether it should be $40 or
+$42. He accepted, and I won the toss. As he made out the ticket, he
+remarked, almost sadly, "We don't make anything out of this." But he
+cheered up, and added, "Well, the others don't either." So I got my
+ticket; and it was over one of the best lines. By that day's work,
+though I got wet through, covered with mud, and very tired, I saved $32.</p>
+
+<p>When on board the east-bound train next day I got talking with some
+dozen men who were going east with me, and, naturally enough, we asked
+each other what fares we had paid, I found they varied greatly, but the
+average was about $60. One little Jew, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> tobacconist, was very proud
+that his only cost $48. He almost wept when I told him that I beat him
+by eight whole dollars. Moreover, I reached New York twenty hours before
+him, for when we parted at Chicago we made arrangements to meet in New
+York, and then I found that he had been obliged to round into Canada,
+and lie over all one night, while I had come direct on the Chicago and
+Alton with only two hours' wait at Lima; so on the whole I did not think
+I did very badly.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="AMERICAN_SHIPMASTERS" id="AMERICAN_SHIPMASTERS"></a>AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS</h2>
+
+<p>It may seem strange to people who are entirely unacquainted with the
+methods of shipmasters and officers generally in the American mercantile
+marine that a sailor should have such a deadly objection to sail in one
+of their vessels; but those who know the hideous brutalities which
+continually occur on such ships will quite understand the feelings of a
+man who finds himself on a vessel which would probably have been manned
+willingly if it had not a bad character among seamen. I have known an
+American vessel lie six weeks and more off Sandridge, Melbourne, waiting
+for a crew, which she could not get, although men were very plentiful
+and the boarding-houses full. There are some vessels running from New
+York, etc., round the Horn to San Francisco, which have a villainous
+reputation. The captain of one of these was sentenced to eighteen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+months in the Penitentiary when I was in the great Pacific Port for
+incredible atrocities practised on his crew. For one thing, he shot
+repeatedly at men who were up aloft, and hit one of them who was on the
+main-yard, though not so seriously as to make him quit his hold of the
+jack-stay. One of the ship's boys was treated with barbarity during the
+whole passage; thrashed, beaten, starved, and ill-used in the vilest
+manner; and at last the captain knocked him down and jumped on his face
+so as to blind him for life. This man went a little too far, and the
+courts, which are always biassed, and very much biassed considering
+their origin, on the side of rich authority, were compelled to do their
+duty by the uproar that this last incident caused. Yet even after that
+the people connected with the shipping interests got up petitions, and
+intrigued and wire-pulled for months to get the Governor of California
+to pardon him. Failing in this, they approached the President; but I am
+heartily glad their efforts were vain.</p>
+
+<p>One of my own shipmates in the <i>Coloma</i>, of Portland, Oregon, was once
+with a commander of this class, and so bad was his reputation that no
+one among the crew knew until they were under way who the captain was.
+My mate said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> "I was at the wheel when I saw him come up the companion,
+and, as I had sailed with him before, my blood ran cold when I
+recognised him. He came straight up to the wheel, stared at me, and
+asked me, 'Haven't you sailed with me before?' 'Yes, sir,' I answered.
+Then he grinned, 'Ha, then you know me. When you go forward you tell the
+crowd what kind of a man I am, and tell them that if they behave
+themselves I'll be a father to 'em.' I knew what his being a father to
+us meant. However, I didn't see any good in scaring the fellows, so when
+my trick was over I told them the skipper was a real beauty. Just then
+there was a roar from the poop, 'Relieve the wheel'; and the man who had
+relieved me came staggering forrard with his face smothered in blood. He
+had let her run off a quarter of a point or so, and the skipper, without
+saying a word, struck him right between the eyes with the end of his
+brass telescope, cutting his nose and forehead in great gashes. That was
+his way of being a father to us, and he kept it up all the passage. The
+first chance I got I skinned out!"</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the American mercantile marine is not so bad as it was.
+These things do not occur in all vessels, but even yet they occur so
+frequently that an English sailor would,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> as a general rule, rather sail
+with the devil himself than an American skipper. What the state of
+affairs was some twenty or thirty years ago one can hardly imagine, but
+it certainly was much worse then. Shanghai-ing is not so much practised.
+There is a story current among seamen, though I know not how true it is,
+that it was checked owing to the lieutenant of an English man-of-war
+being drugged and carried on board an American merchant-man. However,
+there is now, or was but lately, a boarding-house keeper in San
+Francisco whose Christian or first name had been abolished in favour of
+"Shanghai." I had the very doubtful honour of knowing him, and could
+easily believe any stories told of his chicanery and treachery to
+sailormen.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="TRAMPS" id="TRAMPS"></a>TRAMPS</h2>
+
+<p>The poor tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he
+often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is
+often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy&mdash;and
+something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct
+classes of tramps&mdash;those who take the road to look for work, and those
+(the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that
+they may never find it. In this preponderance of the lazy traveller over
+the industrious lies the distinction between the state of affairs in
+America and Australia, for in the latter country the "sundowner," or
+"murrumbidgee whaler," or "hobo" proper, is in the minority.</p>
+
+<p>When I was on the tramp myself in Oregon I was much annoyed by being
+taken for one of the truly idle kind. I remember at Roseberg,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> or a
+little to the north of it, I once stopped and had a talk with a farmer
+whom I had asked for work. Although he had none to give me he was very
+civil, and we talked of tramps and tramping. He looked at me keenly. "I
+can see you are not of the regular professionals," said he. "Thank you
+for your perspicacity," I answered, and though perspicacity fairly
+floored him, he saw it was not an insult, and went on talking. "Now look
+here, my boy, they say we're hard on tramps, and perhaps some of us are,
+but I reckon we sometimes get enough to make us rough. Last summer I was
+in my orchard, picking cherries, I think, and a likely-looking, strong
+young fellow comes along the road. Seeing me, he climbs the fence, and
+says to me, 'Say, boss, could you give me something to eat? I haven't
+had anything to-day.' I looked at him. 'Why, yes,' said I. 'If you'll go
+up to the house I'll be up there in a few minutes when I've filled this
+pail; and while you're waiting just split a little wood. The axe is on
+the wood pile.' Now, look you, what d'ye think he said. 'I don't split
+wood. I ain't going to do any work till I get to Washington Territory.'
+'Oh!' said I, 'that's it, is it? Then look here, young fellow, don't you
+eat anything till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> you get there either; for I won't give you anything,
+and just let me see you climb that fence in a hurry.' So he went off
+cursing. Ain't that kind of thing enough to make us rough on
+tramps?&mdash;let alone that they steal the chickens; and if you look as you
+go down the road you'll see feathers by every place they camp." That was
+true enough, and south of the Umpqua I used to find goose feathers every
+few hundred yards. On that same tramp down through Oregon I once met
+four men travelling north. There had been a murder committed by a tramp
+in the south of Roseberg, and we stopped under an old scrubby oak to
+talk it over. Three of them were working men, but the fourth was a true
+professional, about fifty years of age, whose clothes were ragged to the
+last extremity of tatters. His hands were brown at the backs, but I
+noticed, when I gave him some tobacco, which he very promptly asked for,
+that the palms were perfectly soft. He told us how long he had
+travelled, and how many years it was since he had done any work; and,
+finally rising, he picked up a wretched-looking blanket, and said,
+"Well, good-day, gentlemen. I'm off to call on the Mayor of Portland and
+a few rich friends of mine up there." He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> winked good-humouredly and
+shambled off.</p>
+
+<p>I met a lame young fellow near Jacksonville, who told me he had come all
+the way from New York State, and was thinking of going back. He was in
+very good spirits, and did not appear in the least dismayed at the
+prospect of tramping 2000 miles, for he was one of those who do not use
+the railroad and "beat their way." When I was at work in Sonoma County,
+California, a little fellow came and worked for ten days, who once
+travelled 200 miles inside the cowcatcher of an engine. Most English
+people know the wedge-shaped pilot in front of the American engine well
+enough by repute to recognise it. When the engine was in the yard over
+the hollow track he crawled in, taking a board to sit on inside. When
+the locomotive once ran out on the ordinary track it was impossible to
+remove him, although the fireman soon discovered his presence there, and
+poured some warm water over him. On coming to a little town about fifty
+miles from his destination the constable came down to the train. "He
+came," said Hub (that was our tramp's name) "to see that no tramps get
+off there, or, if they did, to advise them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> to clear out. He walked to
+the engine and said 'Good day' to the driver. 'Got any tramps on board
+to-day, Jack?' he said. 'We've got one,' he answered; 'but we can't get
+him off.' 'Why? how's that?' said the constable. 'Go and look at the
+pilot.' So he came round and looked at me, and he burst into a laugh.
+'All right, Jack,' says he, 'you can keep him. He won't trouble us, I
+can see.' And with that he poked me with his stick, and called everyone
+to take a look. I said nothing, but you bet I felt mean to be cooped up
+there, not able to move, with all the folks laughing at me."</p>
+
+<p>But, in spite of Hub's sad experience, he went off on the tramp again as
+soon as he had enough to buy a pair of new boots with.</p>
+
+<p>Tramps&mdash;that is, the bad ones among them&mdash;are very often insolent when
+they find no one but women in the house. Once a man I knew was working
+in Indiana, but having a bad headache he remained in one morning.
+By-and-by a truculent-looking tramp came along. "Kin you give us suthin'
+to eat, ma'am?" he growled. "Certainly," said the woman, who was always
+kind to travellers. She set about making him a meal and put out some
+bread and meat. The tramp, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> certainly did not look hungry, eyed it
+with disfavour. "Bah!" said he at last, with intense contempt; "I don't
+want that stuff. D'ye think I'm starving? A'nt you got suthing
+nice&mdash;say, some strawberry shortcake and cream?" The woman stared with
+astonishment, as well she might. But the man with the headache heard Mr
+Tramp's remarks. There was a shot-gun hanging in the room where he was;
+so, slipping off the bed, he reached for the weapon, walked out quietly,
+and, thrusting the muzzle of the gun under the tramp's ear, he roared in
+a fierce voice "Get!" And, to use the vernacular, the tramp "got"
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>The last story I will tell of tramps is perhaps the most audacious of
+all. I met the chief actor in British Columbia. It appears that he and
+another man went one Sunday to a very respectable farmhouse in Illinois
+to beg for food. They knocked and there was no answer. They knocked
+again, and still without avail. Then they opened the unlocked door and
+went in. The dining-table was laid ready for a feast, as it seemed, for
+it was adorned with an admirable cold collation, including a turkey,
+several fowls, and a number of pies. The eyes of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> acquaintance and
+his partner sparkled. Here was a chance, for the family was at church.
+They went out, got a sack, and hastily tumbled into it the turkey, the
+fowls, some bread, and the most substantial pies. Just as it was getting
+full one looked out of the window and saw a man coming up the path. They
+were struck with terror of discovery, but on watching they soon saw that
+this was a tramp like themselves. He came up and knocked at the door.
+"Can you give me something to eat, sir?" he asked humbly. "I guess so,"
+said my acquaintance, coolly; "that is, if you ain't one of the tramps
+that won't work. Will you cut some wood for your dinner?" "Of course I
+will," said the tramp, gladly, and he went to the wood pile. While he
+was at work the two spoilers of the Egyptians departed through the back
+door, and went about a hundred yards to the corner of a wood, where they
+laughed till they cried. The result of their man&oelig;uvre was sure to be
+too good to be lost, so one of them climbed up a tree and watched. In
+about a quarter of an hour he saw a string of men and women coming
+towards the house, and still the working tramp made the chips fly. On
+entering the yard one of the men went up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> to interview him, and by the
+tramp's gestures it was evident that he was explaining that he had been
+set to work. Meanwhile, the women went in, but came out again in a
+moment, shrieking with indignation. The next sight was the farmer armed
+with a stick belabouring the astonished worker, who fled across the
+fence incontinently. He was followed to the very verge of the wood, and
+then the exhausted "mossback" left him to return to the house. "It was
+just the funniest thing I ever saw," declared my unabashed friend; "and
+to see that poor fellow get whipped for our sins nearly killed me. But I
+tell you we rewarded him for his labour after all. We found him sitting
+on a stump rubbing himself all over, and invited him to dinner with us.
+So, you see, he got the grub we promised him, and he didn't work for
+nothing, for that would just kill a tramp."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="TEXAS_ANIMALS" id="TEXAS_ANIMALS"></a>TEXAS ANIMALS</h2>
+
+<p>The fauna of Texas is very varied, and a naturalist may find plenty
+there for his note-book, and much to reflect on, if he be a
+contemplative man. A hunter may satisfy himself, too, if he goes into
+the extreme west and north-west, but he must be quick about it, for I
+received a letter years ago from a friend of mine in the south part of
+the Panhandle of Texas, in which he told me that all the land was
+getting fenced in, even in those parts that I knew in 1884 as wide and
+open prairie, and when fences come the beasts go, deer and antelope
+retreat, and "panther" or cougar are hunted and shot by those who own
+sheep, cattle and horses. I am no naturalist, and no great hunter. At
+the risk of causing a smile of contempt I must confess that I can hold a
+shot-gun, a "double-pronged scatter-gun," or a rifle in my hands without
+shooting at anything I see. I have let antelope and deer pass me without
+even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> letting the gun off, and have spared squirrels and birds
+innumerable that most of my friends would have promptly slain; but I
+take great interest in animal life, and am fond of watching the denizens
+of prairie or forest.</p>
+
+<p>When on my friend Jones's ranche in 1884 I sometimes went wild turkey
+hunting or potting; we used to choose a moonlight night and lie under
+the trees, where they roosted, and shoot them on the branches. It was
+mere butchery, and the sole excitement consisted in the doubt as to
+whether any of the big birds would come or not, and the chief interest
+to me was the conversation of my wild Texan friends, who were stranger
+than turkeys to me.</p>
+
+<p>There were not many birds of prey around us, except the big slow-sailing
+turkey-buzzards, which are protected by law as useful scavengers.
+Nevertheless, I shot at one once, and having missed it I never tried
+again.</p>
+
+<p>My great friends were the hares or jackrabbits, which are fast, but very
+easy to shoot, for if I saw one coming my way, loping or cantering
+along, I stood stock-still, and he would come past me without taking the
+least notice of my presence, probably imagining I was only a
+curious-shaped stump. Sometimes I found them in the dry arroyos or
+water-courses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> and threw stones at them. They rarely ran away at once
+at full speed, but for the most part went a little distance and sat up
+to look at me, waiting for two or three stones, until they made up their
+minds that I was decidedly dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Another little animal was the cotton-tail rabbit, so called from the
+white patch of fur under the tail, which is as bright as cotton bursting
+from the pod, I killed one once more by impulse than anything else. It
+ran from under my feet when I had a knife in my hand. I threw it at the
+rabbit, and to my surprise knocked it over, for I am a very bad shot
+with that sort of missile.</p>
+
+<p>The prairie dogs or marmots were in tens of thousands round us, and I
+used to amuse myself by shooting at one in particular with the rifle.
+His hole was a hundred yards from our camp, and he would come out and
+sit on his hill every now and again, and then go nibbling round at the
+grass. I shot at him a dozen times, and once cut the ground under his
+belly, but never killed him. They are extremely hard to get even if
+shot, for they manage to run into their burrows somehow, even if
+mortally wounded. The Texans believe they go back even when quite dead;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+but then they are rather credulous, for some of them believe that the
+rattlesnake lives on friendly terms with the inmates of the burrows. The
+rattlesnakes were very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first
+one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I
+smashed it into pieces, while I trembled like a horse who has nearly
+stepped on a venomous snake. Those Texans who do not believe in the
+friendship of snake and prairie dog say that it is possible to make the
+rattler come out of a hole he has taken refuge in by rolling small
+pieces of dirt and earth down it. For they assert that the prairie dogs
+earth up the mouth of the burrow when they know a snake is in it, and
+the reptile knows what is about to happen.</p>
+
+<p>Of other snakes there were the moccasins, water snakes, and esteemed
+very deadly. It is said that when an Indian is bitten by one of these he
+lies down to die without making any effort to save his life, whereas if
+a rattlesnake has harmed him he usually cures himself. Besides these
+there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver
+coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous
+size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom
+I knew. One night he heard a noise, and looking out of his bunk saw by
+the dim light of the fire an enormous snake crawling out of a hole in
+the corner of the room. He jumped out of bed and ran outside, and found
+a stick. He killed it, and it measured nearly eleven feet. It is called
+bull snake because it is popularly supposed to bellow, but I never heard
+it make any noise of such description.</p>
+
+<p>On these prairies there are occasionally to be found cougars, commonly
+called panthers or "painters," although erroneously. In British Columbia
+they are called mountain lions, and the same name is applied to them in
+California, unless they are called California lions. I am informed by a
+naturalist friend that they are the same species as the South American
+puma. I knew a man in Colorado City who was a great hunter of these
+animals, and he had half a dozen hunting dogs torn and scratched all
+over their bodies, with ears missing, and one with half a tongue, who
+had suffered from the teeth and claws of these cougars. He kept one in a
+cage which was much too small for it, and I was often tempted to poison
+it to put an end to its misery. This man had a regular menagerie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> at the
+back of his house, consisting of various birds, this cougar, and two
+bears.</p>
+
+<p>These bears are not infrequently to be met with on the prairies, and
+while I was staying in a town one was brought in in a wagon. Bruin had
+been captured by four cowboys, who had lassoed and tied it. He weighed
+about 600 lbs., and was a black bear, for the cinnamon and grizzly do
+not, I believe, range in open level country.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these harmful animals there were plenty of antelopes to be
+found, if one went to look for them, and the cowardly slinking coyote
+was often to be seen as one rode across the prairie; and often in
+walking I found tortoises with bright red eyes. These were small, about
+six inches long. In the creeks were plenty of mud turtles, which are
+fond of scrambling on to logs to sun themselves. If disturbed they drop
+into the water instantly, giving rise to a saying to express quickness,
+"like a mud turtle off a log."</p>
+
+<p>I have said nothing of bison. Perhaps there are none now, but in 1884
+there were supposed to be still a few on the Llano Estacado or Stakes
+Plain. I knew one man who used to go hunting them every year and usually
+killed a few. But the last time I saw him he was on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> "jamboree," or
+spree, and killed his unfortunate horse by tying it up without feeding
+it or giving it water while he was drinking or drunk, and so he did not
+make his usual trip. But I imagine there can be few or none left now,
+and probably the only representatives of the race are in the National Park.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IN_A_SAILORS_HOME" id="IN_A_SAILORS_HOME"></a>IN A SAILORS' HOME</h2>
+
+<p>After coming back to England from Australia in the barque <i>Essex</i> I
+found "home" a curious place, which afforded very few prospects of a
+satisfactory job. For if there is one thing more than another borne in
+upon anyone who returns from the Colonies it is the apparent
+impossibility of earning one's living in London. Every avenue is as much
+choked as the entrance to the pit at a popular theatre on a first night.
+And though it is said that we may always get a tooth-brush into a
+portmanteau however full it is, there comes a time when not even a
+tooth-brush bristle can be put there. I looked at London, wandered round
+it, spent all my money, and determined to go to sea again, this time in
+a steamer rather than in a "wind-jammer." With this notion in my mind I
+went down to Hull, whither a shipmate of mine had preceded me. He had
+been a quarter-master in the <i>Essex</i> and was the melancholy possessor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+of a cancelled master's certificate. He owed this to drink, of course,
+as most men do who pile their ships up on the first reef that comes
+handy. But when he was sober he was a good old fellow. He took me round
+to the Sailors' Home in Salthouse Lane, and introduced me to the man who
+ran it. I stayed there six weeks.</p>
+
+<p>The Sailors' Home as an institution is not over-popular with seamen,
+especially with the more improvident of them. And the improvident are
+certainly ninety per cent. of the total sea-going race of man. As a rule
+Homes cease to be such when a man's money is done. He is thrown out into
+the street or into some equivalent of the notorious Straw House. There
+is always much talk at sea about the relative advantages of
+Boarding-Houses and Homes, and half the arguments about the subject end
+in more or less of a "rough house" and a few odd black eyes. However
+rude and brutal the boarding-house master may be, however much of a
+daylight robber he is (and they mostly are "daylight robbers") it is to
+his advantage to make his house popular. There is no surer way of doing
+this than ensuring his boarder a ship at the end of his short spree on
+shore. In many Homes the men look after this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> themselves. Jack is a
+child and wants to be looked after. As far as the Home in Salthouse Lane
+went, I think it combined some of the better qualities of both the
+common resorts of men ashore. The boss of it knew something about
+seamen; he was certainly not a robber, and he kept me and several others
+when we did not possess a red cent among us to jingle on a tombstone. He
+also kept order, for he had had some experience as a prize-fighter, and
+could put the best of us on the floor at a moment's notice. Once or
+twice he did so, and peace reigned in Warsaw.</p>
+
+<p>There were certainly very few of us in the Home. Hull was not quite as
+full of sailors as hell is of devils, as a boarding-house master once
+assured me that San Francisco was when I tried to get taken into his
+house after being rejected even less politely by that eminent scoundrel
+Shanghai Brown. Besides myself there were a sturdy blue-nose or
+Nova-Scotian; a long-limbed, slab-sided herring-back or native of New
+Brunswick, a big thick-headed ass of an Englishman and a smart thief of
+a Cockney, known to us all as Ginger. We lived together without
+quarrelling more than three times a day. This we thought was peace. It
+was certainly more peaceful than my last <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>boarding-house at
+Williamstown, where we had a little bloodshed every night. But there the
+very tables and benches were clamped to the floor; the windows were too
+high above us for anyone to be thrown out, and on a board nailed beyond
+our reach was the legend, "Order must and <i>will</i> be preserved." But that
+boarding-house was very exciting; my last excitement In it was tripping
+up a man, treading on his wrist and taking away a razor with which he
+meant to cut throats. In Hull we never went further than a good common
+"scrap," though they happened fairly often.</p>
+
+<p>Times were not very brisk in Hull just then. At anyrate, we did not find
+them so. We had a "runner" at the Home, who was supposed to help us find
+a ship, but certainly did not. He was a very curious person to look at.
+He weighed eighteen stone and was a perfect giant of strength, with legs
+like columns and a neck about twenty inches round. I never found out
+what his nationality was. He looked like a Russian, but denied that he
+was one. It was said that he once fought six men in the lane and downed
+them all in sheer desperation. As a matter of fact, he was rather
+cowardly, I think, and easily put on, though if he had really got mad
+something would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> had to give. We did not rely on him but looked for
+ships ourselves in a very casual way. Most of us pretended to look for
+them and loafed about the neighbouring slums. When sailormen are thrown
+on their own resources they are pretty helpless creatures. The man who
+is a lion on a topsail yard in a gale is too often like a wet cat in a
+backyard when he is ashore. I was lazy enough myself, but as it happened
+it was I who got something to do for Ginger, for the New Brunswicker and
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>I had not been living in the highly-desirable neighbourhood of Salthouse
+Lane for a week before I found myself without a stiver. The rest were in
+the same condition. Every three days or so I borrowed a penny from the
+boss and got a shave in order to keep up my spirits. Three days' beard
+is almost as depressing as three days' starvation, and the little shop
+at the corner, which renewed my self-respect for a penny, seemed to me a
+most admirable institution. As for drinks, we had none&mdash;we were sober
+sailors indeed. The sun might get over the fore-yard and go down over
+the cro'-jack but we never touched liquor. Nevertheless we had fights to
+relieve the monotony of the situation. The Nova Scotian and I took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> to
+being hostile. We disbelieved each other's lies. So one day while we
+were in the smoking-room he said something which was not at all polite.
+I could not knock him down with a chair because the careful and
+provident boss had had them chained to the floor. So I hit him, and hit
+him rather hard, for what he had said out of pure devilry. He was
+sitting on the table and I knocked him off. His particular mate was the
+very thick-headed Englishman. He did his best for the Nova Scotian by
+holding me very tight while the blue-nose hammered me. This was awkward,
+to say nothing about the unfairness of it. I got away but presently
+found myself across a bench with my back in danger of being broken. More
+by good luck than management I broke loose and got the blue-nose across
+the bench, I am thankful to say I nearly broke his back. Then we waltzed
+round the room in the wildest way, till the wife of the boss and the
+servant girl flew in and broke up the party with the most amazing
+energy. I was the youngest and the most civilised, and the women
+naturally said it was the Nova Scotian's fault. They said so in the most
+voluble manner, and the Nova Scotian did not like it. He said they took
+my part because I was not so ugly as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> was, and said it wasn't fair,
+especially as I had spoilt what little beauty he had. He further
+asserted that he would knock the stuffing out of me, and we were on
+hostile terms for twenty-four hours. Two days later he got a job as
+bo'sun in a barque and his mate shipped with him, and peace was assured
+for a time.</p>
+
+<p>The food they gave us was rough but fairly good and plentiful. Wherever
+the meat came from it could be masticated with some effort. In Barclay's
+boarding-house, in Williamstown, we had to take a spell in the middle of
+a mouthful. I have seen steak there that would have pauled a
+chaff-cutter. In the dining-room at Salthouse Lane there lived the
+wildest, most eccentric clock I ever saw in all my travels. It had a
+most remarkable way of striking quite peculiar to itself. We used to
+dine at one o'clock. At noon the clock usually struck one. In very
+extravagant days it struck two. But no one could guess what it would
+strike when it was really one o'clock. I once counted seventy-two
+strokes, and on a public holiday it went up to a hundred and twenty. It
+was our only amusement.</p>
+
+<p>We were allowed to come in at almost any time. When the Nova Scotian and
+his mate had departed the Cockney and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>herring-back and I used to
+run together and go waltzing round the back part of Hull pretty well all
+night. Once we sat on the steps of a bank for nearly four hours, between
+twelve and four. With us were two young ladies, who were possibly not
+very respectable but about whom I knew nothing as I had never seen them
+before and never saw them again, and another young sailor who was good
+at yarns. I didn't know his name. Absurd as it may seem we were all
+quite happy. The policeman on the beat saw that we were, and evidently
+hated to disturb us. He came past us three times, and each time asked us
+very nicely to go home. Next time he repeated his request, and as he
+said he would look on our doing so in the light of a personal favour to
+himself, we agreed to evacuate the bank at last.</p>
+
+<p>Our greatest privation at the Salthouse Lane establishment was want of
+tobacco. We rarely had any of it. I remember one day, when want of
+nicotine made me very sad, we went, on my suggestion, into the bag-room
+and pulled out our bags and chests. My chest was what seamen call a
+round-bottomed chest, <i>i.e.</i>, a sailor's canvas bag. The beauty of it is
+that anything wanted is always at the bottom. In turning the bag out I
+found half a plug of tobacco. If we had been gold-mining and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> had
+struck a "pocket," or come across big nuggets we could not have been
+happier. We sat in the smoking-room, and having divided the plug we had
+a grand debauch. Of course we sometimes begged a pipe or two from
+luckier men about the docks, but to find a real half plug was something
+to gloat over.</p>
+
+<p>When I had been in the Home nearly two months, and owed what seemed an
+amazing amount of money, I really began to think that if I could not
+ship in a steamer I must go in a wind-jammer again after all. So I
+really began to hunt round in earnest, and after trying all sorts and
+conditions of craft I landed on a job in the <i>Corona</i> of Dundee. She was
+a biggish composite vessel of about seventeen hundred tons register,
+with that horrible thing, wire running rigging. In her I made the
+acquaintance of one of her old crew, who had stayed by her in Hull
+river, who told me various yarns of her behaviour at sea, and how one
+man had been killed in her on her homeward passage from San Francisco.
+As we got to be pals he suggested I should bring some more men if I knew
+of any in want of a job. I brought along Ginger and the herring-back,
+and we went to work cleaning out the limbers. It was not a nice job, for
+the limbers of a ship which has been carrying wheat are, to say the
+least of it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> rather malodorous. We scraped the rotting black muck out
+with boards and scrapers, and sent it up on deck. It was a two and a
+half days' job. Then the mate set me over my two friends to "break out"
+casks of beef and pork from the fore-peak. As I hadn't been much to sea
+it rather amused me to find myself bossing two men who had been at it
+all their lives. But I have to own that they were two of the stupidest
+men I ever met, though they were not bad fellows. Then the time came for
+us to go to London by the "run." They offered us 30s. for the run to
+London river. This, with the five shillings a day I had earned by six
+days' work on board, made &pound;3. I had practically spent nothing while I
+was working in her, although we left the Home too early in the morning
+to have breakfast there. We used to go to a coffee-stall near the dock
+entrance and get what is described by Cockneys as "two doorsteps and a
+cup of thick" for about 2d. We went home for dinner and supper. Thus I
+had nearly all my &pound;3 for the boss of the Home. He got the money when we
+were out in the "stream" with the tug ahead of us.</p>
+
+<p>We were only one night at sea. We washed her down and cleaned her a bit
+generally and made her look a little decent, and I had the look-out that
+night. As we towed the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> distance we came up London river next
+afternoon. It was a gloomy and miserable day, which made London horrible
+to behold. It was like entering hell itself to come up into the parts
+where the big warehouses stand and where the docks are. We came at last
+to Limehouse, where she was to be dry-docked. I was at the wheel then,
+and it took us two hours before we got her in and had her settled down
+upon the blocks with the shores to hold her. Then I took my
+round-bottomed chest and left her. The mate, who had taken a fancy to
+me, asked me to ship in her for her next voyage, but I said I meant to
+"swallow the anchor" and have no more of that kind of work. My
+experience in Hull&mdash;the semi-starvation, the fighting, the loneliness
+and general blackguardism of the whole show&mdash;had somewhat sickened me of
+the life. And yet seamen are good fellows, and might be much better if
+it were not for the greed of owners, who feed them badly, house them
+vilely, and think of nothing in the world but dividends. Seamen know
+what they know, and they resent with bitterness the way they are
+treated. They have a bitter saying, "That's good enough for hogs, dogs
+and sailors." The day must come when England will cry to her children of
+the sea, and weep because they are not.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GLORY_OF_THE_MORNING" id="THE_GLORY_OF_THE_MORNING"></a>THE GLORY OF THE MORNING</h2>
+
+<p>According to his temperament a man's memory of travel and the strange
+wild places of the earth deals chiefly with one set of reminiscences or
+with another. For me the remembered mornings of the wide and lonely
+world, whether in the bush, or on the prairie, or the veldt, or at sea,
+are my chiefest delight. For in them, as in the morning even now, is
+something especial and peculiar which recalls and recreates youth: which
+breaks up the dead customs of to-day, and sends one back again to the
+swift, sweet hours of experiment and change. Assuredly the nights had
+their charm, whether they were spent by some great camp-fire on the
+winding Lachlan, in the darkness of a pine forest in British Columbia,
+or on the fo'c'sle-head of a ship upon the sea; and yet the night was
+the night, the prelude to sleep, and not to activity, the chief joy of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I can recall how a morning broke for me once which was the morning of a
+kind of freedom almost appalling to the child of cities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> This was the
+morning of youth, or rather of earliest manhood, when I was timid and
+yet unafraid, curious, and, after a manner, innocent, when I had slept
+by my first camp-fire, on the Bull Plains of Australia's Riverina. And
+yet I can remember nothing of those hours clearly. Rather is there in my
+mind as typical of the Australian dawn such hours as those I spent away
+beyond the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, on a station on the
+banks of the Willandra Billabong. It was early summer and shearing time
+for a hundred thousand sheep, whose fleeces were destined for Lyons and
+the North of England. I had dropped off a wearied horse close upon
+midnight, and yet by half-past three I was up once more. I stumbled
+sleepily in the starry darkness to the mare that was kept up, one
+Beeswing by name, a mare so swift and keen for a little while that to
+ride her was a delight. She whinnied and muzzled me all over as I put
+the saddle on her and drew the girths tight. Then I swung across her,
+and for some minutes she went gingerly, for she was unsound and wanted
+warming for the hot task before her. Yet it was her only work in the
+long day and she delighted in it even as I did. We picked our way across
+the shadows of big salt-bush and the rounded humps of cotton-bush, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+brown and leafless, to the paddock, a mile square, where the other
+horses were at pasture, and as I rode sleep dropped away from me and my
+eyes opened and my lips grew moist as I sucked in the air of dawn. In
+the east the pale ghost of the day's forerunner stood waiting. The wind
+in that hot season came from the north; it had no intoxicating quality
+save that of comparative coolness after the furnace of yesterday. Yet
+how sweet it was, when I remembered the burning noon, the hot labours of
+the stock-yard and its dust as the ten thousand of that day's driving
+entered reluctantly. And in the darkness the plain stretched before me
+without a break for a thousand miles save for the Barrier Ranges. With
+no map on the whole station I knew not even of them, and as far as eye
+could reach not a rolling sand-dune marred the calm oceanic level of
+that brown sea of land.</p>
+
+<p>And now upon this morning, that yet was night, I was adrift upon a horse
+with a definite task in the great circle of immensity. The rest of the
+world was nothing, and I rode delicately over the rotten grey ground
+till the starshine dwindled and the day came up like a slow diver
+through dark waters. The pallid air was odorous as I rode with rolled-up
+sleeves and open breast, and I sang a little,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> for the night was out of
+me and my throat was sweet. And Beeswing warmed, and under me grew
+nimble, with the swing and easy spring of the dancer, and she reached
+out to feel the bit lightly with an unspoiled mouth and to feel my
+hands, and she raised her lean head and sniffed the air for her own kind
+that we were after. Were we not horse-hunting? She bent her neck and
+went as delicately as ever Agag went, and then bounded lightly over a
+hole in the rotten ground of the great horse-paddock. She and I were
+partners in the morning as the dawn came up. And now, indeed, the
+morning tide broke over the eastern bar, and was like a pale grey flood
+moving over level earth. Then she whinnied low as though she spoke to me
+in a whisper, and I saw one dark, moving shadow, and another, as she
+broke into a gallop. Oh, but out of seven alarmed shadows, fearful of
+work, I needed three, and neither Beeswing nor her rider could endure in
+their pride to drive in seven when a special chosen three were enough.
+The dawn's game began, and though it was yet dawn's dusk we went at a
+gallop. For Beeswing and I together were the swiftest two, or the
+swiftest one, on that great station by the Willandra. But though the
+night was not gone there was enough light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> to see which horses I needed
+and which horses I had to discard, and to note how they broke apart
+cunningly. For two went this way, and one that; and four split into
+units as I swung round the outside edge of them in a wide circle. The
+rottenness of the ground gave chances, and made it hazardous. But
+Beeswing knew her work and the paddock, and now she was warm and as keen
+as fire, and any touch of lameness went away from her. She stretched out
+her fine lean head, and her eyes were quick; her open nostrils almost
+smelt and swept the ground as her head swung to and fro. Beneath me she
+was live steel, tense and wonderful as she sprang to this side and that
+of danger, and yet galloped. Again and again she swerved, and then, as a
+ten-foot hole showed before her, she leapt it in her stride. And again,
+another and another, for here the ground was crumbling, patchy, sunken,
+with little rims of hard earth in between cup-like openings. And as we
+went, and the day came, I swung my long stock-whip and shouted when it
+cracked. I was on them, into them, and they broke back, being
+over-pressed. But Beeswing was a bred stock-horse, she knew the game and
+loved it. Back she swung right upon her haunches, and was away upon the
+hunt after a great raking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> mare called Mischief. We galloped almost side
+by side, and then Mischief quailed and turned coward. As Beeswing swung
+again I brought the whip down on my quarry's quarters.</p>
+
+<p>And now the joy of the game of dawn was great, for selection came in and
+the skill of the game. To-day I wanted Mischief and Black Jack and the
+grey mare. So as I galloped, still with swinging and reverberating whip,
+I edged up and put my knees into Beeswing. As she answered and sprang
+forward, with a rush I was within whip length of Mischief and Tom, with
+Mischief on the outside. One flick of the lash and the mare outpaced
+Tom, leaving him last of the seven. Had I edged up outside of him
+Beeswing might have doubted whether I wanted him or not, but I sent her
+up on his near side, and when I flicked him he plunged back and out and
+she let him go. There were six to deal with, though he came after us
+whinnying; yet not being urged he presently stayed, and then I shot
+forward again and cut off two that I did not want, and now among the
+four there was but one I wished to leave behind. They were well aware
+that one or more of them was not to work to-day, for I still hung upon
+them with some eager discrimination. They knew the final shout of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+victory as well as I who sent it up. But Lachlan, the horse I wished to
+leave, was the fastest of the four and kept ahead. So I ran them hard
+for a quarter of a mile and then edged out a little, and slowed down
+till they slowed and left a space betwixt the three and Lachlan. I
+suddenly spoke to Beeswing and shook her up till she came swiftly
+abreast of my three galloping like horses in a Roman chariot. Then
+left-handed I cut Lachlan in the flank, and with a swift turn Beeswing
+swept between him and the others. They stayed and turned while disparted
+Lachlan ran wildly. And now my three, being turned, ran back for the
+others; and Beeswing followed them like fire and came up with them, and
+once more turned them and sent them for home. To keep them going while
+the others whinnied meant urging; it meant filling their minds,
+occupying their attention. So once more, with a great shout, I was upon
+them and swung the whip, letting it fall with a crack first on this side
+and then on that, and now in the growing daylight the dust rose up as we
+galloped. And presently I saw the little "tin" house where the
+out-station boss lived, and the tent I shared with my chum the
+"rouseabout." And as we went fast and faster (for it was morning and I
+was young) the sun thrust up a shoulder behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> me and it was day in
+Australia, day in the Lachlan back-blocks. And I could see Long Clump, a
+patch of dwarf-box, over my shoulder as I turned loosely in the saddle
+to note whether the other horses still followed. I laughed at the day
+(for it was dawn), and yet I knew as I ran my three into the yard that
+ere the day was done I should have ridden sixty miles, and have mustered
+20,000 sheep in Long Clump Paddock. And when I stayed outside the
+stock-yard and put up the slip panels and patted Beeswing on the neck
+the one great pleasure of the day was over. The rest was not to be
+accomplished in the dusk of dawn and under the morning star, but had to
+be wrought out in flying dust, amid the plague of flies and the fierce
+heat of an Austral noon, whose heat increased with the slow sun's
+decline. But that swift sweet hour of the morning had been my very own.
+The remainder of the day belonged to the world, to duty, to the man who
+paid me a pound a week and "tucker" for my hands and arms and as much
+brains as work with sheep demanded. Yet through these hours sometimes
+the glory of the morning remained.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>There are mornings on land and mornings on the sea, and when the world
+is a grey wash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> and a mask of spindrift it is good to be alive upon the
+sea, high on a topsail-yard, to see the grey return of the glory of the
+day. The work is often sheer murder, but it is the work of men, and
+though the skin cracks and the nails bleed, as the bulging, slatting,
+frantic canvas surges like a cast-iron wave, the thin red-shirted line
+along the jack-stay does heroic work without meaning it, without one
+touch of consciousness, without praise, and mostly without even that
+reward of a "tot" of grog so sweet to the simple-minded sailorman. Ah,
+yes, to be sure we were heroes, and I too (though now soft and
+self-conscious) played an Homeric part upon the yard, was bold, and
+afraid, and "funked" it with any god-smitten, panic-driven half-god by
+Scamander's banks, or the windy walls of Troy. Now I know what it was,
+and can see the grey wash of ocean, and the grey wash of white-faced
+morning with the great seas driving against the rising day, even as the
+rollers of the Atlantic surge against the base of a high berg. Little
+good men at home, fat men, rotund, easy souls, or those who are neither
+good, nor fat, nor easy, may stare and imagine yet not come near the
+reality when the wind booms and the sea rises, and the great concave of
+night sky flattens and presses down upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> driven ship, and men
+strive to escape doom and yet care not, and work till they are blind,
+and then drop down into the scant shelter of the deck, where the icy
+wind seems warm after the strife and bellowing up aloft. Heroes? To be
+sure we were heroes. What is being shot at a mile off, or a hundred
+yards off, to being shot at by the very heavens while one hangs over the
+gaping trenches of the sea? There is not an old shellback alive who has
+clung between angry heaven and the grey-green pastures of the deep but
+deserves a Victoria Cross for unconscious, dutiful, grumbling, growling
+valour. He might justly call every scanty dollar he earns a medal. For
+he has often fought in the Pacific, or by the Horn, or off the windy
+Cape. To recall the thick tempest at midnight, when the wind harps
+thunder on the stretched rigging, is to be a man again. If I blow their
+trumpet, the trumpet of the old sea-dogs, these scallawags, these
+Vikings, what matter if I seem to blow my own, having been their
+companion one campaign or two upon the deep? That "Me" is dead, I know,
+and can only be resurgent in memory, and will never laugh or feel afraid
+again when the slatting canvas jars one's very teeth. Yet to remember
+(as I can remember) how one wild night on the Southern Pacific grew into
+morning gives me back youth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> and morning again when I cared nothing for
+death, since death was as far off, as impossible, ay, as absurd, as Fame
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>It had blown hard all day, and an hour after midnight our scanty band,
+some ten of us (mostly Cockneys like myself), stood upon the foot-ropes
+of the lower fore-topsail. There should have been twenty, but to be
+undermanned has been English fashion since Agincourt. Growl we ever so
+loudly where could more be found? The work was to be done by ten, one
+more even was not to be asked for. If the task seemed possible, why, it
+was possible, and when we scrambled to that narrow line of battle in the
+dark it seemed as easy as most things at sea, where the difficult is
+done hourly. Risks are nothing there; to risk nothing would be to risk
+destruction and to incur the bitter reproach of having shipped "not to
+go aloft." Each man to his fellow on the yard was a shadow and a pale
+blot of a face; each voice was a windy whisper, a bellow blown down into
+silence. As the ship ran, and lifted, and pitched and trembled, her
+narrow wedge shape was a blot beneath us: on each side of her white foam
+marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in
+its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out
+upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand,
+and being the youngest waited for the word to "leech" it or "skin" it
+up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow
+fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside
+me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others I saw and heard
+not. The word came along the yard from the bunt to "leech" it up, and we
+leant over and caught the leech and pulled it on the yard. Now the fight
+began, but the beginning of it was easy sparring, and though the wind
+blew heavy, and each minute we had to remember death when she checked
+her roll with a jerk, the weather leech came up easy and we chuckled,
+each being glad. And in half an hour, or an hour, we were half masters
+of the wind, or as much of it as gave the sail life, after many small
+defeats. And then (whose fault of fingers for not being steel hooks, who
+shall say?) the wind, having got reinforcements, tore the victory from
+us and away went the sail once more free and thundering in the dark. The
+word was passed again, the indomitable word by the indomitable bo'sun at
+the bunt, this time to "skin" it up, and each man clawed out again at
+the flat booming canvas, clawed at it with his crooked fingers as
+wrestlers claw for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> hold behind each others' backs. A wrinkle gave hold,
+we nipped it, and then the ironic devil in the gale shrieked with
+laughter and snatched even so small an advantage from us. We knew the
+"old man" and the mate were cursing us down below. Did they curse us, or
+the weather, or the owners, or our English Agincourt trick once more?
+What did it matter to us, beaten and unbeaten, as we rested for a moment
+and then again stretched out bleeding fingers for some little advantage,
+knowing well that when such a gale blew victory was only possible when
+by constant trials the chance came of each being given good or fair
+handhold at once. Then came a shriek of wind and a blown-out lull and a
+wrinkle lapsed into a fold. We shouted "Now!" left hold of the
+jack-stay, and with feet outstretched grabbed slack canvas and hung on
+as another squall came singing like shrapnel across the peaks of the
+leaping sea. "Hold on now, hold on!" so sang all of us, and we cursed
+each other furiously. "Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it's lost
+again!" We cursed ourselves, felt our muscles crack, our nails shred,
+our skin peel and stretch and sting, and yet (thanks to our noble
+selves) we only lost an inch. Once more&mdash;"Now, now up, you dogs!" and
+that's the long-lost, long-waited,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> sudden, surprising clock of dawn
+yonder. We have been two hours here, and once more the sail leaps up and
+comes down. Here, two hours, two compressed swift hours, two compacted
+eternities measured in gasps and half the work is done unless we weaken
+and let up and let go.</p>
+
+<p>But that's the dawn!</p>
+
+<p>Morning and the glory of it, the grey wash of Eternity; sea-grey and
+world-grey and sky-grey, all in one great wash with a little whiteness
+standing for daylight. Beyond the illimitable wash where the sea breaks
+against the sky is the sun; source of all, strength of all. And there is
+no sleep to wash out of our eyes before we catch up strength from it,
+and encouragement. Lately we might have raised the Ajax cry, "In the
+light, in the light, destroy us," but now we see the little sea-plant of
+grey-green grow in the east, and we are strong. There is light, or a
+blight, a greyness out ahead and the deck whitens all awash, and the
+"old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the
+rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of
+following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses,
+and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once
+and again as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout
+geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a
+little, dived, scooped up seas and shook them off. And yet the topsail
+was not conquered.</p>
+
+<p>And now and once again the squalls howled, and we held on, gaining
+nothing, yet losing nothing. We were blind but obstinate; to have gained
+something when everything might be lost beneath us gave us grip and
+courage. Ah, and then, then the great chance came, and as the last great
+fold of white canvas rose up like a breaking wave we shouted, flung
+ourselves upon it, and as our bellies (lean by now) held the rest,
+smothered it and beat its last life out. The thing had been alive; the
+gods too had blown, and we had been all but dissipated, but now we were
+conquerors, and the gaskets bound our dead prey to the yard. And the
+morning was up, a wild and evil-minded waste it flowered in; the music
+of the storm shrieked like the Valkyries scurrying through grey space.
+But what cared we, since now she would carry or drag what sail remained,
+creaseless, resonant, wide-arched and wonderful. The light leapt from
+crest to crest, and a little pale yellow blossom of blown dawn peeped
+out of the grey. Like a touch of fire it reanimated our washed and
+reeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> world; we laughed as we dropped down after our three hours'
+battle with the demons of the air. It was morning; there was coffee and
+tobacco; our souls were satisfied and satiated with rewarding toil; if
+Fate was kind there would be neither making nor shortening of sail till
+the next day. We touched the deck and ran for'ard laughing. We saluted
+the cook, blinking at the door of his galley. "Good-morning, doctor!"
+and it <i>was</i> "good-morning!" for we were mostly young.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>On the lofty sloping plains of Texas and Kansas the air is often keen at
+night, even in the summer time. And what it is in winter let train hands
+on the Texas Pacific declare. But in the warmer season, when northers
+have ceased to blow, it has an intoxicating, thrilling quality only
+comparable to the breath of the higher South African veldt. It is good
+to be alive then, and the glory of the morning is an excellent and
+moving glory since it wakes one to swift activity and the very joy of
+being. For long months I had worked upon a ranch in the Southern
+Panhandle, and now felt healthy energies stirring within me. In Western
+America the very blood of life is unrest; to remain is difficult; the
+difficulties of motion are its joys, though hardship and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>privation be
+the migrant's life for ever. For me the ever-present prairie grew a
+little dull; for sheep were sheep always, and there were mountains afar
+off and strange, bright rivers and the dark, odorous forests of the
+north. Though my boss was of the order that remains and accumulates
+wealth he understood when I declared that I must go or die. On the third
+day hereafter he and an old confederate "Colonel" (discharged as "Full
+Private" doubtless) and I and a Mexican sheep-herder moved southward
+towards the railroad. We travelled on horseback and in a two-mule buggy,
+and with the movement discontent dropped away from me and all was well
+with the world, even though I knew not what weeks or even days should
+bring me. That night we camped thirty miles from the ranch and thirty
+from the little town we called a city, which had grown up in the
+sand-dunes by the banks of the Texan Colorado. We lighted our scanty
+fire at sundown. It was a typical camp of the later days upon the high
+prairie, and a not untypical set of men. Our talk was of horses and
+steers and sheep and of Virginia, whence our grizzled colonel came, and
+the Mexican sat and smoked and said nothing, save with his beady,
+brilliant eyes, as he made his yellow papers into flat <i>cigaritas</i>. And
+at nine o'clock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> silence and sleep fell upon us while the mules and
+horses champed their dry fare beside the buggy. For me the sleep of the
+just was my due, for I had worked hard that day. Yet I woke suddenly
+before the dawn, and woke all at once, refreshed and alive. It was still
+dark and yet I knew it was not properly night, for the time sense in me,
+measured healthily by refreshment, told me of the passage of time, and I
+arose from my blankets. As I walked out among the shadows softly my
+companions made no motion, and the horses whinnied coaxingly, as though
+I were still the guardian of their provender. The wind was cool, even
+cold, as it blew from the north, and on every side the vast prairie
+stretched like a mysterious dark green sea, with here and there a shadow
+heaving itself out of the infinite level. I walked lightly with a happy
+sense of detachment and well-being, almost with the feeling of a quiet
+resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere and in cities one awakes reluctantly; the trumpet of the Angel
+of the Day is heard with deaf ears; but here in the keen coolness, the
+vast greenness, the infinite interspace of prairie betwixt city and
+city, I was awake and keen and cool as dewy grass, and as peaceful as
+the stars even before the Day blew her horn upon the verge of a far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+horizon. This was summer, but it was not dawn yet; the year was young
+even in August because this was night; and I was part of the hour and
+the year. It was well with the world and well with me as I left the camp
+and marched snuffing the air like an antelope and with as keen a joy.
+And as I walked I was aware again that it was not night, for there was a
+Day-spring in the East, a pale glow like a whitish mirage, and star by
+star the night departed, till I stayed and looked back to the west and
+saw the silent waggon under which my sleeping comrade still lay
+unconscious of the hour. And slowly, very slowly the Glory of the
+Morning broke out of bondage and covered the glory of the night until
+the pallor of the new-born day was fine pale gold, and the gold was
+under-edged with rose, and the rose grew insistently and shot upward
+like a great corona upon the eclipsing earth. And as I stood, balancing
+lightly upon my light feet, bathed with dew, I moved my lips and greeted
+Day without conscious words, being even as my own ancestor, who perhaps
+had no words of greeting. And so upon that solitude the day was born
+like a new miracle with only one visible worshipper, and the sun rose up
+like a star and was then a convexed line of fire, and presently it ate a
+little into the prairie; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> the world was light and rose and green and
+very near me, so that I sighed a little and then walked back briskly to
+the camp and raised a loud shout, not to the sun, but to my fellow-men.
+For the Glory had departed and there was the work of the day to be done.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>Colston &amp; Coy. Limited, Printers, Edinburgh.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp's Notebook, by Morley Roberts
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6213 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp's Notebook, by Morley Roberts
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Tramp's Notebook
+
+Author: Morley Roberts
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2008 [EBook #25190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAMP'S NOTEBOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A TRAMP'S NOTE-BOOK
+
+BY
+
+MORLEY ROBERTS
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"RACHEL MARE," "BIANCA'S CAPRICE," "THE PROMOTION OF THE ADMIRAL."
+
+
+LONDON
+
+F. V. WHITE & CO. LTD.
+
+14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO                     1
+
+SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES                                  16
+
+A PONDICHERRY BOY                                         40
+
+A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS                                    51
+
+MY FRIEND EL TORO                                         61
+
+BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST                                   71
+
+A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON                                79
+
+IN CAPETOWN                                               88
+
+VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE                                  95
+
+NEAR MAFEKING                                            101
+
+BY THE FRASER RIVER                                      110
+
+OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA                     118
+
+A TALK WITH KRUGER                                       128
+
+TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA         136
+
+ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE                                 142
+
+BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS                                    162
+
+IN CORSICA                                               167
+
+ON THE MATTERHORN                                        176
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS                      186
+
+AT LAS PALMAS                                            194
+
+THE TERRACINA ROAD                                       204
+
+A SNOW-GRIND                                             216
+
+ACROSS THE BIDASSOA                                      230
+
+ON A VOLCANIC PEAK                                       238
+
+SHEEP AND SHEEP HERDING                                  244
+
+RAILROAD WARS                                            256
+
+AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS                                     263
+
+TRAMPS                                                   267
+
+TEXAS ANIMALS                                            275
+
+IN A SAILORS' HOME                                       282
+
+THE GLORY OF THE MORNING                                 293
+
+
+
+
+A Tramp's Note-Book
+
+
+
+
+A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+How much bitter experience a man keeps to himself, let the experienced
+say, for they only know. For my own part I am conscious that it rarely
+occurs to me to mention some things which happened either in England or
+out of it, and that if I do, it is only to pass them over casually as
+mere facts that had no profound effect upon me. But the importance of
+any hardship cannot be estimated at once; it has either psychological or
+physiological sequelae, or both. The attack of malaria passes, but in
+long years after it returns anew and devouring the red blood, it breaks
+down a man's cheerfulness; a night in a miasmic forest may make him for
+ever a slave in a dismal swamp of pessimism. It is so with starvation,
+and all things physical. It is so with things mental, with
+degradations, with desolation; the scars and more than scars remain:
+there is outward healing, it may be, but we often flinch at mere
+remembrance.
+
+But time is the vehicle of philosophy; as the years pass we learn that
+in all our misfortunes was something not without value. And what was of
+worth grows more precious as our harsher memories fade. Then we may bear
+to speak of the days in which we were more than outcasts; when we
+recognised ourselves as such, and in strange calm and with a broken
+spirit made no claim on Society. For this is to be an outcast indeed.
+
+I came to San Francisco in the winter of 1885 and remained in that city
+for some six months. What happened to me on broad lines I have written
+in the last chapter of _The Western Avernus_. But nowadays I know that
+in that chapter I have told nothing. It is a bare recital of events with
+no more than indications of deeper miseries, and some day it may chance
+to be rewritten in full. That I was of poor health was nothing, that I
+could obtain no employment was little, that I came to depend on help was
+more. But the mental side underlying was the worst, for the iron
+entered into my soul. I lost energy. I went dreaming. I was divorced
+from humanity.
+
+America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who
+would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan
+element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives
+rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures
+without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all
+other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the
+unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a
+lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which
+carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The
+rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms
+which precedes their welding, the beginning of socialism, is the father
+of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In
+what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent,
+hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there
+now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man
+for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace the legend on
+the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it
+in his heart.
+
+But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of
+the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds
+good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the
+American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his
+biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek
+in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only
+poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of
+the hardest, if not _the_ hardest city in the world. Speaking from my
+own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand
+miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even
+excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is
+the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed
+different.
+
+I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one
+shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on
+boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time
+embittered me. On the third day I saw some of my equal outcasts
+inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading
+it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a
+street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At
+the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving
+who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving
+only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was
+bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.
+
+But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in
+melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one
+but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of
+sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service.
+I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I
+found the place half full of out-o'-works, and sat down by the door. The
+preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked
+like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and
+benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say
+he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking,
+and about thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about
+him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.
+
+But I returned.
+
+I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in
+everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false
+pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that
+insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me
+have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place
+on the earth.
+
+But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by
+way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me.
+Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected
+this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at
+a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for
+the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious
+types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a
+morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but
+my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a
+well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told
+stories well, and filled a church every night for ten days. During
+these days I heard him attentively, as I might have listened to any
+well-told lecture on any pseudo-science. But my intellect was
+unconvinced, my conscience untouched, and Scott gave me up. I attended a
+number of services by myself; I was lonely, poor, hopeless, living an
+inward life. The subjective became real at times, the objective faded. I
+had a little occasional work, and expected some money to reach me early
+in the year. But I had no energy, I divided my time between the Free
+Library and churches. And it drew on to Christmas.
+
+It was a miserable time of rain, and Christmas Day found me hopeless of
+a meal. But by chance I came across a man whom I had fed, and he
+returned my hospitality by dining me for fifteen cents at the "What
+Cheer House," a well-known poor restaurant in San Francisco. Then
+followed some days of more than semi-starvation, and I grew rather
+light-headed. The last day of the year dawned and I spent it foodless,
+friendless, solitary. But after a long evening's aimless wandering about
+the city I came back to California Street, and at ten o'clock went to
+the Watch-Night Service in the room of the first preacher I had heard.
+
+The hall was a big square one, capable of seating some three hundred
+people. There was a raised platform at the end; a broad passage way all
+round the room had seats on both sides of it, and made a small square of
+seats in the centre. I sat down in the middle of this middle square, and
+the room was soon nearly full. The service began with a hymn. I neither
+sang nor rose, and I noticed numbers who did not. In peculiar isolation
+of mind my heart warmed to these, and I was conscious of rising
+hostility for the creatures of praise. There was one strong young fellow
+about three places from me who remained seated. Glancing behind the
+backs of those who were standing between us I caught his eye, which met
+mine casually and perhaps lightened a little. He had a rather fine face,
+intelligent, possibly at better times humorous. I was not so solitary.
+
+A man singing on my left offered me a share of his hymn-book. I declined
+courteously. The woman on my right asked me to share hers. That I
+declined too. Some asked the young fellow to rise, but he refused
+quietly. Yet I noticed some of those who had remained seated gave in to
+solicitations or to the sound or to some memory, and rose. Yet many
+still remained. They were all men, and most of them young.
+
+After the hymn followed prayer by the minister, who was surrounded on
+the dais by some dozen girls. I noticed that few were very good-looking;
+but in their faces was religious fervour. Yet they kept their eyes on
+the man. The prayer was long, intolerably and trickily eloquent and
+rhetorical, very self-conscious. The man posed before the throne. But I
+listened to every word, half absorbed though I was in myself. He was
+followed in prayer by ambitious and emotional people in the seats. One
+woman prayed for those who would not bow the knee. Once more a hymn
+followed, "Bringing home the sheaves."
+
+The air is not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it
+tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of
+voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to
+move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left
+did not. The sermon followed, and I felt as if I had escaped a
+humiliation.
+
+What the preacher said I cannot remember, nor is it of any importance.
+He was not an intellectual man, nor had he many gifts beyond his rather
+sleek manner and a soft manageable voice. He was obviously proud of
+that, and reckoned it an instrument of success. It became as monotonous
+to me as the slow oily swell of a tropic sea in calm. I would have
+preferred a Boanerges, a bitter John Knox. The intent of his sermon was
+the usual one at such periods; this was the end of the year, the
+beginning was at hand. Naturally he addressed himself to those who were
+not of his flock; it seemed to me, as it doubtless seemed to others,
+that he spoke to me directly.
+
+The custom of mankind to divide time into years has had an effect on us,
+and we cannot help feeling it. Childhood does not understand how
+artificial the portioning of time is; the New Year affects us even when
+we recognise the fact. It required no florid eloquence of the preacher
+to convince me of past folly and weakness; but it was that weakness that
+made me weak now in my allowing his insistence on the New Year to affect
+me. I was weak, lonely, foolish. Oh, I acknowledged I wanted help! But
+could I get help here?
+
+It was past eleven when they rose to sing another hymn. Many who had not
+sung before sang now. Some of the girls from the platform came down and
+offered us hymn-books. A few took them half-shamefacedly; some declined
+with thanks; some ignored the extended book. And after two hymns were
+sung and some more prayers said, it was half-past eleven. They announced
+five minutes for silent meditation. Looking round, I saw my friend on
+the left sitting with folded arms. He was obviously in no need of five
+minutes.
+
+In the Free Library I had renewed much of my ancient scientific reading,
+and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to
+explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I
+was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked
+myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how
+the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature
+could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the
+intellect by the force of his own personality. But all the same the
+hour, the time, and the song followed by silence, and the silence by
+song, affected me and affected many. What had I to look forward to when
+I went out into the street? And if I yielded they might, nay would, help
+me to work. I laughed a little at myself, and was scornful of my
+thoughts. They were singing again.
+
+This time the band of women left the dais and in a body went slowly
+round and round the aisle isolating the centre seats from the platform
+and the sides. From the platform the preacher called on the others to
+rise and join them, for it was nearly twelve o'clock, the New Year was
+at hand. Most of the congregation obeyed him, I counted but fifteen or
+twenty who refused.
+
+The volume of the singing increased as the seats emptied, in it there
+was religious fervour; it appealed strongly even to me. I saw some young
+fellows rise and join the procession; perhaps three or four. There were
+now less than twelve seated. The preacher spoke to us personally; he
+insisted on the passing minutes of the dying year. And still the singers
+passed us. Some leant over and called to us. Our bitter band lessened
+one by one.
+
+Then from the procession came these girl acolytes, and, dividing
+themselves, they appealed to us and prayed. They were not beautiful
+perhaps, but they were women. We outcasts of the prairie and the camp
+fire and the streets had been greatly divorced from feminine sweet
+influences, and these succeeded where speech and prayer and song had
+failed. As one spoke to me I saw hard resolution wither in many. What
+woman had spoken kindly to them in this hard land since they left their
+eastern homes? Why should they pain them? And as they joined the singing
+band of believers the girls came to those of us who still stayed, and
+doubled and redoubled their entreaties. That it was not what they said,
+but those who said it, massing influences and suggestion, showed itself
+when he who had been stubborn to one yielded with moist eyes to two. And
+three overcame him who had mutely resisted less.
+
+They knew their strength, and spoke softly with the voice of loving
+women. And not a soul had spoken to me so in my far and weary songless
+passage from the Atlantic States to the Pacific Coast. Long-repressed
+emotions rose in me as the hair of one brushed my cheek, as the hand of
+another lay upon my shoulder and mutely bade me rise; as another called
+me, as another beckoned. I looked round like a half-fascinated beast,
+and I caught the eye again of the man on my left. He and I were the only
+ones left sitting there. All the rest had risen and were singing with
+the singers.
+
+In his eye, I doubt not, I saw what he saw in mine. A look of
+encouragement, a demand for it, doubt, an emotional struggle, and
+deeper than all a queer bitter amusement, that said plainly, "If you
+fail me, I fall, but I would rather not play the hypocrite in these hard
+times." We nodded rather mentally than actually, and were encouraged, I
+knew if I yielded I was yielding to something founded essentially on
+sex, and for my honesty's sake I would not fail.
+
+"My child, it is no use," I said to her who spoke to me, and, struggling
+with myself, I put her hand from me. But still they moved past and sang,
+and the girls would not leave me till the first stroke of midnight
+sounded from the clock upon the wall. They then went one by one and
+joined the band. I turned again to my man, and conscious of my own hard
+fight, I knew what his had been. We looked at each other, and being men,
+were half ashamed that another should know we had acted rightly
+according to our code, and had won a victory over ourselves.
+
+And now we were truly outcasts, for no one spoke to us again. The
+preacher prayed and we still sat there. But he cast us no word, and the
+urgent women were good only to their conquered. Perhaps in their souls
+was some sense of personal defeat; they had been rejected as women and
+as angels of the Lord. We two at anyrate sat beyond the reach of their
+graciousness; their eyes were averted or lifted up; we lay in outer
+darkness.
+
+As they began to sing once more we both rose and with a friendly look at
+each other went out into the streets of the hostile city. It is easy to
+understand why we did not speak.
+
+I never saw him again.
+
+
+
+
+SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES
+
+
+The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is
+touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we
+fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff
+excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for
+Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself to a
+triumphant foreigner? For my own part, I found a kind of gentle,
+unobtrusive politeness even among those Portuguese who knew I was
+English when I went to Lisbon on the last occasion of the two nations
+quarrelling about a mud flat on the Zambesi. Occasionally, on being
+taken for an American, I did not correct the mistake, for having no
+quarrel with Americans they sometimes confided to me the bitterness of
+their hearts against the English. I stayed in Lisbon at the Hotel
+Universal in the Rua Nova da Almeda, a purely Portuguese house where
+only stray Englishmen came. At the _table d'hote_ one night I had a
+conversation with a mild-mannered Portuguese which showed the curious
+ignorance and almost childish vanity of the race. I asked him in French
+if he spoke English. He did so badly and we mingled the two languages
+and at last talked vivaciously. He was an ardent politician and hated
+the English virulently, telling me so with curious circumlocutions. He
+was of opinion, he said, that though the English were unfortunately
+powerful on the sea, on land his nation was a match for us. As for the
+English in Africa, he declared the Portuguese able to sweep them into
+the sea. But though he hated the English, his admiration for Queen
+Victoria was as unbounded as our own earth-hunger. She was, he told me,
+entirely on the side of the Portuguese in the sad troubles which English
+politicians were then causing. He detailed, as particularly as if he had
+been present, a strange scene reported to have taken place between
+Soveral, their ambassador, and Lord Salisbury, in which discussion grew
+heated. It seemed as if they would part in anger. At last Soveral arose
+and exclaimed with much dignity: "You must now excuse me, my Lord
+Salisbury, I have to dine with the Queen to-night." My Lord Salisbury
+started, looked incredulous, and said coldly, "You are playing with me.
+This cannot be." "Indeed," said the ambassador, producing a telegram
+from Windsor, "it is as I say." And then Salisbury turned pale, fell
+back in his chair, and gasped for breath. "And after that," said my
+informant, "things went well." Several people at the table listened to
+this story and seemed to believe it. With much difficulty I preserved a
+grave countenance, and congratulated him on the possession of an
+ambassador who was more than a match for our Foreign Minister. Before
+the end of dinner he informed me that the English were as a general rule
+savages, while the Portuguese were civilised. Having lived in London he
+knew this to be so. Finding that he knew the East End of our gigantic
+city, I found it difficult to contradict him.
+
+Certainly Lisbon, as far as visible poverty is concerned, is far better
+than London. I saw few very miserable people; beggars were not at all
+numerous; in a week I was only asked twice for alms. One constantly
+hears that Lisbon is dirty, and as full of foul odours as Coleridge's
+Cologne. I did not find it so, and the bright sunshine and the fine
+colour of the houses might well compensate for some draw-backs. The
+houses of this regular town are white, and pale yellow, and fine
+worn-out pink, with narrow green painted verandahs which soon lose
+crudeness in the intense light. The windows of the larger blocks are
+numerous and set in long regular lines; the streets if narrow run into
+open squares blazing with white unsoiled monuments. All day long the
+ways are full of people who are fairly but unostentatiously polite. They
+do not stare one out of countenance however one may be dressed. In
+Antwerp a man who objects to being wondered at may not wear a light
+suit. Lisbon is more cosmopolitan. But the beauty of the town of Lisbon
+is not added to by the beauty of its inhabitants. The women are
+curiously the reverse of lovely. Only occasionally I saw a face which
+was attractive by the odd conjuncture of an olive skin and light grey
+eyes. They do not wear mantillas. The lower classes use a shawl. Those
+who are of the _bourgeois_ class or above it differ little from
+Londoners. The working or loafing men, for they laugh and loaf, and work
+and chaff and chatter at every corner, are more distinct in costume,
+wearing the flat felt sombrero with turned-up edges that one knows from
+pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still
+retains a smack of it in the way they disregard the sleeves and hang it
+from their shoulders. These men are decidedly not so ugly as the women,
+and vary wonderfully in size, colour and complexion, though a big
+Portuguese is a rarity. The strong point in both sexes is their natural
+gift for wearing colour, for choosing and blending or matching tints.
+
+These Portuguese men and women work hard when they do not loaf and
+chatter. The porters, who stand in knots with cords upon their
+shoulders, bear huge loads; a characteristic of the place is this
+load-bearing and the size of the burdens. Women carry mighty parcels
+upon their heads; men great baskets. Fish is carried in spreading flat
+baskets by girls. They look afar off like gigantic hats: further still,
+like quaint odd toadstools in motion. All household furniture removing
+among the poor is done by hand. Two or four men load up a kind of flat
+hand-barrow without wheels till it is pyramidal and colossal with piled
+gear. Then passing poles through the loop of ropes, with a slow effort
+they raise it up and advance at a funereal and solemn pace. The slowness
+with which they move is pathetic. It is suggestive of a dead burden or
+of some street accident. But of these latter there must be very few;
+there is not much vehicular traffic in Lisbon. It is comparatively rare
+to see anything like cruelty to horses. The mules which draw the
+primitive ramshackle trams have the worst time of it, and are obliged to
+pull their load every now and again off one line on to another, being
+urged thereto with some brutality. But these trams do not run up the
+very hilly parts of the city; the main lines run along the Tagus east
+and west of the great Square of the Black Horse. And by the river the
+city is flat.
+
+Only a little way up, in my street for instance, it rapidly becomes
+hilly. On entering the hotel, to my surprise I went downstairs to my
+bedroom. On looking out of the window a street was even then sixty feet
+below me. The floor underneath me did not make part of the hotel, but
+was a portion of a great building occupied by the poorer people and let
+out in flats. During the day, as I sat by the window working, the noise
+was not intolerable, but at night when the Lisbonensians took to amusing
+themselves they roused me from a well-earned sleep. They shouted and
+sang and made mingled and indistinguishable uproars which rose wildly
+through the narrow deep space and burst into my open window. After long
+endurance I rose and shut it, preferring heat to insomnia. But in the
+day, after that discord, I always had the harmonious compensations of
+true colour. Even when the sun shone brilliantly I could not distinguish
+the grey blue of the deep shadows, so much blue was in the painted or
+distempered outer walls. It was in Lisbon that I first began to discern
+the mental effect of colour, and to see that it comes truly and of
+necessity from a people's temperament. Can a busy race be true
+colourists?
+
+In some parts of the town--the eastern quarters--one cannot help
+noticing the still remaining influence of the Moors. There are even some
+true relics; but certainly the influence survives in flat-sided houses
+with small windows and Moorish ornament high up just under the edge of
+the flat roof. One day, being tired of the more noisy western town, I
+went east and climbed up and up, being alternately in deep shadow and
+burning sunlight and turned round by a barrack, where some soldiers eyed
+me as a possible Englishman. I hoped to see the Tagus at last, for here
+the houses are not so lofty, and presently, being on very high ground, I
+caught a view of it, darkly dotted with steamers, over some flat roofs.
+Towards the sea it narrows, but above Lisbon it widens out like a lake.
+On the far side was a white town, beyond that again hills blue with
+lucid atmosphere. At my feet (I leant against a low wall) was a terraced
+garden with a big vine spread on a trellis, making--or promising to make
+in the later spring--a long shady arbour, for as yet the leaves were
+scanty and freshly green. Every house was faint blue or varied pink, or
+worn-out, washed-out, sun-dried green. All the tones were beautiful and
+modest, fitting the sun yet not competing with it. In London the colour
+would break the level of dull tints and angrily protest, growing scarlet
+and vivid and wrathful. And just as I looked away from the river and the
+vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from
+a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going
+quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on
+the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not
+sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise
+darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they
+laugh and are merry even after they have children of their own.
+
+Though little apt to do what is supposed to be a traveller's duty in
+visiting certain obvious places of interest, I one day hunted for the
+English cemetery in which Fielding lies buried, and found it at last
+just at the back of a little open park or garden where children were
+playing. On going in I found myself alone save for a gardener who was
+cutting down some rank grass with a scythe. This cemetery is the
+quietest and most beautiful I ever saw. One might imagine the dead were
+all friends. They are at anyrate strangers in a far land, an English
+party with one great man among them. I found his tomb easily, for it is
+made of massive blocks of stone. Having brought from home his little
+_Voyage to Lisbon_, written just before he died, I took it out, sat down
+on the stone, and read a page or two. He says farewell at the very end.
+As I sat, the strange and melancholy suggestion of the dead man speaking
+out of that great kind heart of his, now dust, the strong contrast
+between the brilliant sunlight and the heavy sombreness of the cypresses
+of death, the song of spring birds and the sound of children's voices,
+were strangely pathetic. I rose up and paced that little deadman's
+ground which was still and quiet. And on another grave I read but a
+name, the name of some woman "Eleanor." After life, and work, and love,
+this is the end. Yet we do remember Fielding.
+
+On the following day I went to Cintra out of sheer _ennui_, for my
+inability to talk Portuguese made me silent and solitary perforce. And
+at Cintra I evaded my obvious duty, and only looked at the lofty rock on
+which the Moorish castle stands. For one thing the hill was swathed in
+mists, it rained at intervals, a kind of bitter _tramontana_ was
+blowing. And after running the gauntlet of a crowd of vociferous
+donkey-boys I was anxious to get out of the town. I made acquaintance
+with a friendly Cintran dog and went for a walk. My companion did not
+object to my nationality or my inability to express myself in fluent
+Portuguese, and amused himself by tearing the leaves of the Australian
+gum-trees, which flourish very well in Portugal. But at last, in cold
+disgust at the uncharitable puritanic weather which destroyed all beauty
+in the landscape, I returned to the town. Here I passed the prison. On
+spying me the prisoners crowded to the barred windows; those on the
+lower floor protruded their hands, those on the upper storey sent down a
+basket by a long string; I emptied my pockets of their coppers. It
+seemed not unlike giving nuts to our human cousins at the Zoo. Surely
+Darwin is the prince of pedigree-makers. Before him the darings of the
+bravest herald never went beyond Adam. He has opened great possibilities
+to the College dealing with inherited dignity of ancient fame.
+
+This Cintra is a town on a hill and in a hole, a kind of half-funnel
+opening on a long plain which is dotted by small villages and farms. If
+the donkey-boys were extirpated it might be fine on a fine day.
+
+Returning to the station, I ensconced myself in a carriage out of the
+way of the cutting wind, and talked fluent bad French with a kindly old
+Portuguese who looked like a Quaker. Two others came in and entered into
+a lively conversation in which Charing Cross and London Bridge occurred
+at intervals. It took an hour and a quarter to do the fifteen mites
+between Cintra and Lisbon. I was told it was considered by no means a
+very slow train. Travelling in Portugal may do something to reconcile
+one to the trains in the south-east of England.
+
+The last place I visited in Lisbon was the market. Outside, the glare of
+the hot sun was nearly blinding. Just in that neighbourhood all the main
+buildings are purely white, even the shadows make one's eyes ache. In
+the open spaces of the squares even brilliantly-clad women seemed black
+against white. Inside, in a half-shade under glass, a dense crowd moved
+and chattered and stirred to and fro. The women wore all the colours of
+flowers and fruit, but chiefly orange. And on the stone floor great flat
+baskets of oranges, each with a leaf of green attached to it, shone like
+pure gold. Then there were red apples, and red handkerchiefs twisted
+over dark hair. Milder looking in tint was the pale Japanese apple with
+an artistic refinement of paler colour. The crowd, the good humour, the
+noise, even the odour, which was not so offensive as in our English
+Covent Garden, made a striking and brilliant impression. Returning to
+the hotel, I was met by a scarlet procession of priests and acolytes who
+bore the Host. The passers-by mostly bared their heads. Perhaps but a
+little while ago every one might have been worldly wise to follow their
+example, for the Inquisition lasted till 1808 in Spain.
+
+In the afternoon of that day I went on board the _Dunottar Castle_, and
+in the evening sailed for Madeira.
+
+A week's odd moments of study and enforced intercourse with waiters and
+male chambermaids, whose French was even more primitive than my own,
+had taught me a little Portuguese, that curious, unbeautiful sounding
+tongue, and I found it useful even on board the steamer. At anyrate I
+was able to interpret for a Funchal lawyer who sat by me at table, and
+afterwards invited me to see him. This smattering of Portuguese I found
+more useful still in Madeira, or at Funchal--its capital--for I stayed
+in native hotels. It is the only possible way of learning anything about
+the people in a short visit. Moreover, the English hotels are full of
+invalids. It is curious to note the present prevalence of consumption
+among the natives of Funchal. It is a good enough proof on the first
+face of it that consumption is catching. There is a large hospital here
+for Portuguese patients, though the disease was unknown before the
+English made a health resort of it.
+
+Funchal has been a thousand times described, and is well worthy of it.
+Lying as it does in a long curve with the whole town visible from the
+sea, as the houses grow fewer and fewer upon the slopes of the lofty
+mountain background, it is curiously theatrical and scenic in effect. It
+is artistically arranged, well-placed; a brilliant jewel in a dark-green
+setting, and the sea is amethyst and turquoise.
+
+I stayed in an hotel whose proprietor was an ardent Republican. One
+evening he mentioned the fact in broken English, and I told him that in
+theory I also was of that creed. He grew tremendously excited, opened a
+bottle of Madeira, shared it with me and two Portuguese, and insisted on
+singing the Marseillaise until a crowd collected in front of the house,
+whose open windows looked on an irregular square. Then he and his
+friends shouted "Viva la partida dos Republicanos!" The charges at this
+hotel were ridiculously small--only three and fourpence a day for board
+and lodging. And it was by no means bad; at anyrate it was always
+possible to get fruit, including loquats, strawberries, custard apples,
+bananas, oranges, and the passion-flower fruit, which is not enticing on
+a first acquaintance, and resembles an anaemic pomegranate. Eggs, too,
+were twenty-eight for tenpence; fish was at nominal prices.
+
+But there is nothing to do in Funchal save eat and swim or ride. The
+climate is enervating, and when the east wind blows from the African
+coast it is impossible to move save in the most spiritless and languid
+way. It may make an invalid comparatively strong, but I am sure it might
+reduce a strong man to a state of confirmed laziness little removed
+from actual illness. I was glad one day to get horses, in company with
+an acquaintance, and ride over the mountains to Fayal, on the north side
+of the island. And it was curious to see the obstinate incredulity of
+the natives when we declared we meant going there and back in one day.
+The double journey was only a little over twenty-six miles, yet it was
+declared impossible. Our landlord drew ghastly pictures of the state we
+should be in, declaring we did not know what we were doing; he called in
+his wife, who lifted up her hands against our rashness and crossed
+herself piously when we were unmoved; he summoned the owner of the
+horses, who said the thing could not be done. But my friend was not to
+be persuaded, declaring that Englishmen could do anything, and that he
+would show them. He explained that we were both very much more than
+admirable horsemen, and only minimised his own feats in the colonies by
+kindly exaggerating mine in America, and finally it was settled gravely
+that we were to be at liberty to kill ourselves and ruin the horses for
+a lump sum of two pounds ten, provided we found food and wine for the
+two men who were to be our guides. In the morning, at six o'clock, we
+set out in a heavy shower of rain. Before we had gone up the hill a
+thousand feet we were wet through, but a thousand more brought us into
+bright sunlight. Below lay Funchal, underneath a white sheet of
+rain-cloud; the sea beyond it was darkened here and there; it was at
+first difficult to distinguish the outlying Deserta Islands from sombre
+fogbanks. But as we still went up and up the day brightened more and
+more, and when Funchal was behind and under the first hills the sea
+began to glow and glitter. Here and there it shone like watered silk.
+The Desertas showed plainly as rocky masses; a distant steamer trailed a
+thin ribbon of smoke above the water. Close at hand a few sheep and
+goats ran from us; now and again a horse or two stared solemnly at us;
+and we all grew cheerful and laughed. For the air was keen and bracing;
+we were on the plateau, nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and in
+a climate quite other than that which choked the distant low-lying town.
+Then we began to go down.
+
+All the main roads of the Ilha da Madeira are paved with close-set
+kidney pebbles, to save them from being washed out and destroyed by the
+sudden violent semi-tropical rains. Even on this mountain it was so,
+and our horses, with their rough-shod feet, rattled down the pass
+without faltering. The road zigzagged after the manner of mountain
+roads. When we reached the bottom of a deep ravine it seemed impossible
+that we could have got there, and getting out seemed equally impossible.
+The slopes of the hills were often fifty degrees. Everywhere was a thick
+growth of brush and trees. At times the road ran almost dangerously
+close to a precipice. But at last, about eleven o'clock, we began to get
+out of the thick entanglement of mountains and in the distance could see
+the ocean on the north side of the island. "Fayal is there," said our
+guide, pointing, as it seemed, but a little way off. Yet it took two
+hours' hard riding to reach it. Our path lay at first along the back of
+a great spur of the main mountain; it narrowed till there was a
+precipice on either side--on the right hand some seven or eight hundred
+feet, on the left more than a thousand. I had not looked down the like
+since I crossed the Jackass Mountain on the Fraser River in British
+Columbia. Underneath us were villages--scattered huts, built like
+bee-hives. The piece of level ground beneath was dotted with them. The
+place looked like some gigantic apiary. The dots of people seemed
+little larger than bees. And soon we came to the same stack-like houses
+close to our path. It was Sunday, and these village folks were dressed
+in their best clothes. They were curiously respectful, for were we not
+_gente de gravate_--people who wore cravats--gentlemen, in a word? So
+they rose up and uncovered. We saluted them in passing. It was a
+primitive sight. As we came where the huts were thicker, small crowds
+came to see us. Now on the right hand we saw a ridge with pines on it,
+suggesting, from the shape of the hill, a bristly boar's back; on the
+left the valley widened; in front loomed up a gigantic mass of rock,
+"The Eagle's Cliff," in shape like Gibraltar. It was 1900 feet high, and
+even yet it was far below us. But now the path pitched suddenly
+downwards; there were no paving-pebbles here, only the native hummocks
+of rock and the harder clay not yet washed away. The road was like a
+torrent-bed, for indeed it was a torrent when it rained; but still our
+horses were absolute in faith and stumbled not. And the Eagle's Cliff
+grew bigger and bigger still as we plunged down the last of the spur to
+a river then scanty of stream, and we were on the flat again not far
+from the sea. But to reach Fayal it was necessary to climb again,
+turning to the left.
+
+Here we found a path which, with all my experience of Western America
+mountain travel, seemed very hard to beat in point of rockiness and
+steepness. We had to lead our horses and climb most carefully. But when
+a quarter of a mile had been done in this way it was possible to mount
+again, and we were close to Fayal. I had thought all the time that it
+was a small town, but it appeared to be no more than the scattered huts
+we had passed, or those we had noted from the lofty spur. Our objective
+was a certain house belonging to a Portuguese landowner who occupied the
+position of an English squire in the olden days. Both my friend and I
+had met him several times in Funchal, and, by the aid of an interpreter,
+had carried on a conversation. But my Portuguese was dinner-table talk
+of the purely necessary order, and my companion's was more exiguous than
+my own. So we decided to camp before reaching his house, and eat our
+lunch undisturbed by the trouble of being polite without words. We told
+our guide this, and as he was supposed to understand English we took it
+for granted that he did so when we ordered him to pick some spot to
+camp a good way from the landowner's house. But in spite of our
+laborious explanations he took us on to the very estate, and plumped us
+down not fifty yards from the house. As we were ignorant of the fact
+that this was the house, we sent the boy there for hot water to make
+coffee, and then to our horror we saw the very man whom we just then
+wanted to avoid. We all talked together and gesticulated violently. I
+tried French vainly; my little Portuguese grew less and less, and
+disappeared from my tongue; and then in despair we hailed the cause of
+the whole misfortune, and commanded him to explain. What he explained I
+know not, but finally our friend seemed less hurt than he had been, and
+he returned to his house on our promising to go there as soon as our
+lunch was finished.
+
+The whole feeling of this scene--of this incident, of the place, the
+mountains, the primitive people--was so curious that it was difficult to
+think we were only four days from England. Though the people were gentle
+and kind and polite, they seemed no more civilised, from our point of
+view, than many Indians I have seen. Indeed, there are Indian
+communities in America which are far ahead of them in culture. I seemed
+once more in a wild country. But our host (for, being on his ground, we
+were his guests) was most amiable and polite. It certainly was rather
+irksome to sit solemnly in his best room and stare at each other without
+a word. Below the open window stood our guide, so when it became
+absolutely necessary for me to make our friend understand, or for me to
+die of suppression of urgent speech, I called to Joao and bade him
+interpret. We were silent again until wine was brought. Then his
+daughter, almost the only beautiful Portuguese or Madeiran girl I ever
+saw, came in. We were introduced, and, in default of the correct thing
+in her native language, I informed her, in a polite Spanish phrase I
+happened to recollect, that I was at her feet. Then, as I knew her
+brother in Funchal, I called for the interpreter and told her so as an
+interesting piece of information. She gave me a rose, and, looking out
+of the window, she taught me the correct Portuguese for Eagle's
+Cliff--"Penha d'aguila." We were quite friends.
+
+It was then time for us to return if we meant to keep to our word and do
+the double journey in one day. But a vociferous expostulation came from
+our host. He talked fast, waved his hands, shook his head, and was
+evidently bent on keeping us all night. We again called in the
+interpreter, explaining that our reputation as Englishmen, as horsemen,
+as men, rested on our getting back to Funchal that night, and, seeing
+the point as a man of honour, he most regretfully gave way, and, having
+his own horse saddled, accompanied us some miles on the road. We rode up
+another spur, and came to a kind of wayside hut where three or four
+paths joined. Here was congregated a brightly-clad crowd of nearly a
+hundred men, women and children. They rose and saluted us; we turned and
+took off our hats. I noticed particularly that this man who owned so
+much land and was such a magnate there did the same. I fancied that
+these people had gathered there as much to see us pass as for Sunday
+chatter. For English travellers on the north side of the island are not
+very common, and I daresay we were something in the nature of an event.
+Turning at this point to the left, we plunged sharply downwards towards
+a bridge over a torrent, and here parted from our land-owning friend. We
+began to climb an impossible-looking hill, which my horse strongly
+objected to. On being urged he tried to back off the road, and I had
+some difficulty in persuading him that he could not kill me without
+killing himself. But a slower pace reconciled him to the road, and as I
+was in no great hurry I allowed him to choose his own. Certainly the
+animals had had a hard day of it even so far, and we had much to do
+before night. We were all of us glad to reach the Divide and stay for a
+while at the Poizo, or Government rest-house, which was about half-way.
+One gets tolerable Madeira there.
+
+It was eight or half-past when we came down into Funchal under a moon
+which seemed to cast as strongly-marked shadows as the very sun itself.
+The rain of the morning had long ago passed away, and the air was
+warm--indeed, almost close--after the last part of the ride on the
+plateau, which began at night-time to grow dim with ragged wreaths of
+mist. Our horses were so glad to accomplish the journey that they
+trotted down the steep stony streets, which rang loudly to their iron
+hoofs. When we stopped at the stable I think I was almost as glad as
+they; for, after all, even to an Englishman with his country's
+reputation to support, twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle are
+somewhat tiring. And though I was much pleased to have seen more of the
+Ilha da Madeira than most visitors, I remembered that I had not been on
+horseback for nearly five years.
+
+
+
+
+A PONDICHERRY BOY
+
+
+When I first went out to the Australian colonies in 1876 in the
+_Hydrabad_, a big sailing ship registered as belonging to Bombay, I had
+a very curious time of it, take it altogether. It was my first real
+experience of the outside world, and the hundred and two days the
+_Hydrabad_ took from Liverpool to Melbourne made a very valuable piece
+of schooling for a greenhorn. I was a steerage passenger, and the
+steerage of a sailing vessel twenty-five years ago was something to see
+and smell. Perhaps it is no better now, but then it was certainly very
+bad. The food was poor, the quarters dirty, the accommodation far too
+limited to swing even the traditional cat in, and my companions were for
+the most part Irishmen of the lowest and poorest peasant class. In these
+days I was quite fresh from home and was rather particular in my tastes.
+Some of that has been knocked out of me since. A great deal of it was
+knocked out of me in that passage.
+
+Yet it was, take it altogether, an astonishingly fertile trip for a
+young and green lad who was not yet nineteen. The _Hydrabad_ usually
+made a kind of triangular voyage. She took emigrants and a general cargo
+to Melbourne, loaded horses there for Australia, and came back to
+England once more with anything going in the shape of cargo to be picked
+up in the Hooghly. She carried a Calashee crew, that is, a crew of mixed
+Orientals, and among them were native Hindoos, Klings, Malays,
+Sidi-boys. In those days I had not been in the United States and had not
+yet imbibed any great contempt for coloured people. They were on the
+whole infinitely more interesting than the Irish. I knew nothing of the
+world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The
+old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who
+took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a
+pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the
+sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he
+believed to be English, he could not read a word, even in the
+Persi-Arabic character. The cooks, or _bandaddies_, were also friends
+of mine, and more than once they supplemented the intolerably meagre
+steerage fare by giving me something good to eat. I soon knew every man
+in the crew, and could call each by his name. Sometimes I went on the
+lookout with one of them, and one particular Malay was very keen on
+teaching me his language. So far as I remember the languages talked by
+the crew included Malay, Hindustani, Tamil and, oddly enough, French.
+That language was of course spoken by someone who came from Pondicherry,
+that small piece of country which, with Chandernagor, represents the
+French-Indian Empire of Du Plessis's time. I had learnt a little
+Hindustani and Malay, and could understand all the usual names of the
+sails and gear before I discovered that there was someone on board whose
+native tongue was French, or who, at anyrate, could talk it fluently
+enough. We were far to the south of the Line before I found this out.
+For, of course, among his fellows the boy from Pondicherry spoke
+Hindustani mixed with Malay and perhaps with Tamil. I well remember how
+I made the discovery. It was odd enough to me, but far stranger, far
+more wonderful, far more full of mystery to my little, excitable and
+very dark-skinned friend. I daresay, if he lives, that to this hour he
+remembers the English boy who so surprised him.
+
+The weather was intensely hot and I had climbed for a little air into
+one of the boats lying in the skids. The shadow of the main-topsail
+screened me from the sun; there was just enough wind to keep the canvas
+doing its work in silence. It was Sunday and the whole ship was
+curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently
+disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who
+came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which
+he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first
+time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know
+a little French. I knew remarkably little myself; I could read it with
+difficulty. My colloquial French was then, as now, intensely and
+intolerably English. I said, "_Bon jour_, Pondicherry!"
+
+The result was astounding. He turned to me with an awe-stricken look, as
+he dropped his tin plate with its precious burden, and holding out both
+hands as though to embrace a fellow countryman, he exclaimed in
+French,--
+
+"What--what, do _you_ come from Pondicherry?"
+
+For a moment or two I did not follow his meaning. I did not see what
+French meant to him; I could not tell that it represented his little
+fatherland. I had imagined he knew it was a foreign tongue. But it was
+not foreign to him.
+
+"No," I said, "I am an Englishman."
+
+He sat down on a thwart and stared at me as if I was some strange
+miracle. His next words let me into the heart of his mystery.
+
+"It is _not_ possible. You _speak_ Pondicherry!"
+
+He did not even know that he was speaking French, the language of a
+great Western nation. He could not know that I was doing my feeble best
+to speak the language of a great literature; the language of Voltaire,
+of Victor Hugo, of diplomacy. No, he and I were speaking Pondicherry,
+the language of a derelict corner of mighty Hindustan. Now he eyed me
+with suspicion.
+
+"When were you there?" he demanded in a whisper.
+
+If I was not Pondicherry born I must at least have lived there in order
+to have learnt the language.
+
+"Pondy, I was never there," I answered.
+
+He evidently did not believe me. I had some mysterious reason for
+concealing that I was either Pondicherry born or that I had resided
+there.
+
+"Then you didn't know it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you have not been in Villianur?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or Bahur?"
+
+I shook my head. He shook his and stared at me suspiciously. Perhaps I
+had committed some crime there.
+
+"Then how did you learn it?"
+
+"I learnt it in England."
+
+That I was undoubtedly speaking the unhappy truth would have been
+obvious to any Frenchman. But to Pondicherry what I said was so
+obviously a gross and almost foolish piece of fiction that he shook his
+head disdainfully. And yet why should I lie? He spoke so rapidly that I
+could not follow him.
+
+"If you speak so fast I cannot understand," I said.
+
+"Ah, then," he replied hopefully, "it is a long time since you were
+there. Perhaps you were very young then?"
+
+I once more insisted that I had never been at Pondicherry, or even in
+any part of India. All I said convinced him the more that I was not
+speaking the truth.
+
+"You speak Hindustani with the _bandaddy_."
+
+It is true I had learnt a dozen phrases and had once or twice used them.
+To say I had learnt them in the ship was useless.
+
+"Oh, no, you have been in India. Why will you not tell me the truth,
+sahib? I am the only one from Pondicherry but you."
+
+He spoke mournfully. I was denying my own fatherland, denying help and
+comradeship to my own countryman! It was, thought Pondicherry, cruel,
+unkind, unpatriotic. He gathered up the mess he had spilt and descended
+sorrowfully to the main deck to discuss me with his friends among the
+crew. As I heard afterwards from the wrinkled old serang, there were
+many arguments started in the fo'castle as to my place of origin. It was
+said, by those who took sides against Pondicherry, that even if I knew
+"Pondicherry" (and for that they only had his word), I also undoubtedly
+knew English. And when did any of the white rulers of Pondicherry know
+that tongue? Some of the Lascars who had been on the Madras coast in
+country boats swore that no one spoke English there. On the whole, as I
+came from England and knew English it was more likely that I was what I
+said than that I came from Pondicherry. But even so all agreed it was a
+mystery that I could speak it. The serang came to me quietly.
+
+"Say, Robat, you tell me. You come Pondicherry?"
+
+"No, serang," said "Robat."
+
+"But you speak Pondicherry the boy say, Robat?"
+
+"Yes, I speak it, serang. Many English people speak it a little. Very
+easy for English people learn a little, just the same as we learn _jeldy
+jow, toom sooar_."
+
+And as the serang was well acquainted with the capabilities of English
+officers with regard to abusive language, he went away convinced that
+"Pondicherry" and "Hindustani" insults were perhaps taught in English
+schools after all.
+
+In spite of my refusing to take Pondicherry into my confidence he
+remained on friendly, if suspicious, terms with me. When I said a word
+or two of French to him he beamed all over, and turned to the others as
+much as to say, "Didn't I tell you he came from my country?" For
+nothing that I and the serang or his friends said convinced him, or even
+shook his opinion. He used to sneak up to me occasionally as he worked
+about the decks and spring a question on me about someone at
+Pondicherry. Of course I had heard of no one there. But my ignorance was
+wholly put on; he was sure of that. Often and often I caught his eyes on
+me, and I knew his mind was pondering theories to account for my
+conduct. It was all very well for me or anyone else to say that
+Pondicherry was talked elsewhere than in his own home. He had travelled,
+he had been in Australia, in England, in many parts of the East, and he
+had never, never met anyone but himself and myself who knew it! I think
+he would have given me a month's pay if I would have only owned up to
+having been at Pondicherry. He certainly offered me an ample plateful of
+curried shark, a part of one we had caught days before, if I would be
+frank about the matter; but even my desire to obtain possession of that
+smell and drop it overboard did not tempt me to a white lie. I persisted
+in remaining an Englishman through the whole passage of one hundred and
+two days. And then at last, after good times and bad, after calms on
+the Line and no small hurricane south of stormy Cape Leuuwin, we came up
+with Cape Otway and entered the Heads. Pondicherry's time for solving
+the mystery grew short. In another few hours the passengers would go
+ashore and be never seen again. For my own part, though the passage had
+been one of pure discomfort, I was almost sorry to leave the old ship. I
+had to quit a number of friends, black and white, and had to face a new
+and perhaps unfriendly world. Though the _Hydrabad_ half-starved me I
+was at anyrate sure of water and biscuit. And many of the poor Lascars
+had been chums to me. As I made preparations to leave the vessel and
+stood on deck waiting, I saw Pondicherry sneaking about in the
+background. I said farewell to his old serang, and the Malay
+quartermasters, who were all fine men, and to some of the meaner outcast
+Klings, and then Pondicherry darted up to me. I knew quite well what was
+in his mind. It was in his very eyes. I was now going, and should be
+seen no more. Perhaps at the last I might be induced to speak the truth.
+And even if I did not own up bravely, it was at anyrate necessary to bid
+farewell to a countryman, though he denied his own country. He came
+close to me in the crowd and touched my sleeve appealingly.
+
+"What is it, Pondy?"
+
+"Oh, sahib, you tell me _now_ where you learn Pondicherry?"
+
+"Pondy, I told you the truth long ago," I answered.
+
+"Sahib, it is not possible."
+
+He turned away, and I went on board the tug which served us as a tender.
+Presently I saw him lean over the rail and wave his hand. When he saw
+that I noticed him he called out in French once more, with angry,
+scornful reproach,--
+
+"If you were not there, how, _how_ can you speak it?"
+
+
+
+
+A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS
+
+
+The travel-micrococcus infected me early. Before I can remember I
+travelled in England, and, when my memory begins, a stay of two years in
+any town made me weary. My brothers and sisters and I would then inquire
+what time the authorities meant to send my father elsewhere, and we were
+accustomed to denounce any delay on the part of a certain Government
+department in giving us "the route." Such a youth was gipsying, and if
+any original fever of the blood led to wandering, such a training
+heightened the tendency. To this day even, after painful and laborious
+travel, Fate cannot persuade me that my stakes should not be pulled up
+at intervals. I understand "trek fever," which, after all, is only
+Eldorado hunting. With the settler unsatisfied a belief in immortality
+takes its place.
+
+In the ferment of youth and childhood, which now threatens to quiet
+down, my feet stayed in many English towns and villages, from
+Barnstaple to Carlisle, from Bedford to Manchester, and I hated them all
+with fervour, only mitigating my wrath by great reading. I could only
+read at eight years of age, but from that time until eleven I read a
+mingled and most preposterous mass of literature and illiterature. It
+was a substitute for travel, and, in my case, not a substitute only, but
+a provoker. Reading is mostly dram-drinking, mostly drugging; it throws
+a veil over realities. With the child I knew best it urged him on and
+infected me with world-hunger and roused activities. To be sure the
+Elder Brethren, who are youth's first gaolers, nearly made me believe,
+by dint of repetition (they, themselves, probably believing it by now),
+that books and knowledge, which are acquired for, with, by and through
+examinations, were, of themselves, noble and admirable, and that an
+adequate acquaintance with them (provided such acquaintance could be
+proved adequate to Her Majesty's Commissioners of the Civil Service)
+would inevitably make a man of me. For the opinion is rooted deep in
+many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a
+cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard,
+is to be a very fine fowl indeed.
+
+Some spirit of revolt saved the child (now a boy, I guess) from being a
+Civil Cochin China, and sent him to Australia. The ship in which I
+sailed for Melbourne was my first introduction to outside realities, to
+world realities as distinct from the preliminary brutalities of school,
+and it opened my eyes--indeed, gave me eyes instead of the substitutes
+for vision favoured by the Elder Brethren, who may be taken to include
+schoolmasters, professors, and good parents. How any child survives
+without losing his eyesight altogether is now a marvel to me. Certainly,
+very few retain more than a dim vision, which permits them to wallow
+amongst imitations (such as a last year's Chippendale morality) and
+imagine themselves well furnished. My new university (after Owens
+College an admirable hot-bed for some products under glass) was the
+_Hydrabad_, 1600 tons burden, with a mixed mass of passengers, mostly
+blackguards in the act of leaving England to allow things to blow over,
+and a Lascar crew, Hindoos, Seedee boys and Malays. The professors at
+this notable college were many, and all were fit for their unendowed
+chairs. They taught mostly, and in varying ways, the art of seeing
+things as they are, and if some saw things as they were not, that is,
+double, the object lesson was eminently useful to the amazed scholar.
+Some of them pronounced me green, and I was green.
+
+But a four months' session and procession through the latitudes and
+longitudes brought me to Australia in a less obviously green condition.
+I had learnt the one big lesson that too few learn. I had to depend on
+myself. And Australia said, "You know nothing and must work." Had I not
+sat with Malays, and collogued with negroes, and eaten ancient shark
+with Hindoos? I was afraid of the big land where I could reckon on no
+biscuit tub always at hand, but these were men who had faced other
+continents and other seas. I could face realities, too, or I could try.
+
+It is the unnecessary work that gets the glory mostly, especially in a
+fat time of peace, but some day the scales will be held more level. A
+shearer of sheep will be held more honourable than a shearer of men; and
+he who shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked
+lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had
+their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more
+than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no more.
+But we live under the rule of Rabesqurat, Queen of Illusion.
+
+The Australian bush university, with the sun, moon and stars in the high
+places, and labour, hunger and thirst holding prominent lecturerships,
+helped to educate me. The proof of that education was that I know now
+that a big bit of my true life's work was done there. The preparation
+turned out to be the work itself. One does necessary things there, and
+they are done without glory and often without present satisfaction,
+except the satisfaction given to toil. What does the world want and must
+have? If all the theatres were put down and all the actors sent to
+useful work, things would be better instead of worse. If all the
+music-halls became drill-halls it would add to the world's health. If
+most of the writers concluded justly that they were in no way necessary
+or useful, some healthy man might be added to the list of workers and
+some unhealthy ones would find themselves better or very justly dead.
+But the sheep and cattle have to be attended to, and ships must be
+sailed, and bridges must be built. Hunger and thirst, and all the
+educational unrighteousness of the elements must be met, fought,
+out-marched or out-manoeuvred. I went to school in the Murray Ranges,
+and carried salt to fluky sheep. Even if this present screed stirred me
+doubly to action, the salt-carrying was better. The sun and moon and
+stars overhead, and the big grey or brown plain beneath were for ever
+instilling knowledge that a city knows not. A city's soot kills elms,
+they say; only plane trees, self-scaling and self-cleaning, live and
+grow and survive. I think man is more like the elm; he cannot clean
+himself in a city.
+
+It has often been a question for me to solve, now youth exists no more,
+except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's
+own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in
+the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy
+exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the
+beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying
+the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies
+what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself or
+a few others.
+
+For America was my second great university, and though I lack any
+learned degree earned by examinations, and may put no letters after my
+name, I maintain I passed creditably, if without honours, in the hardest
+schools of the world. About a young man's first freedom still hangs some
+illusion. With apparently impregnable health and unsubdued spirits, he
+has the illusion of present immortality; life is a world without end.
+But when youth begins to sober and health shows cracks and gaps, and
+hard labour comes, then the realities, indeed, crawl out and show
+themselves. My early work in New South Wales seemed to me then like
+sport. America was real life; it was for ever putting the stiffest
+questions to me. I can imagine an examination paper which might appal
+many fat graduates.
+
+1. Describe from experience the sensations of hunger when prolonged over
+three days.
+
+2. Explain the differences in living in New York, Chicago and San
+Francisco on a dollar a week. In such cases, how would you spend ten
+cents if you found it in the street at three o'clock in the morning?
+
+3. How long would it be in your own case before want of food destroyed
+your sense of private property? Give examples from your own experience.
+
+4. How far can you walk without food--(_a_) when you are trying to
+reach a definite point; (_b_) when you are walking with an insane view
+of getting to some place unknown where a good job awaits you?
+
+5. If, after a period (say three weeks) of moderate starvation, and two
+days of absolute starvation, you are offered some work, which would be
+considered laborious by the most energetic coal-heaver, would you tackle
+it without food or risk the loss of the job by requesting your employer
+to advance you 15 cents for breakfast?
+
+6. Can you admire mountain scenery--(_a_) when you are very hungry;
+(_b_) when you are very thirsty? If you have any knowledge of the
+ascetic ecstasy, describe the symptoms.
+
+7. You are in South-west Texas without money and without friends. How
+would you get to Chicago in a fortnight? What is the usual procedure
+when a town objects to impecunious tramps staying around more than
+twenty-four hours? Can you describe a "calaboose"?
+
+8. Sketch an American policeman. Is he equally polite to a railroad
+magnate and a tramp? What do you understand by "fanning with a club"?
+
+9. Which are the best as a whole diet--apples or water-melons?
+
+10. Define "tramp," "bummer," "heeler," "hoodlum," and "politician."
+
+This is a paper put together very casually, and just as the pen runs,
+but the man who can pass such an examination creditably must know many
+things not revealed to the babes and sucklings of civilisation. From my
+own point of view I think the questions fairly easy, a mere
+matriculation paper.
+
+When the Queen of Illusion illudes no more youth is over. I am ready to
+admit Illusion still reigned when I took to writing for a living. The
+first illusion was that I was not doing it for a living (it is true I
+did not make one) but because the arts were rather noble than otherwise
+and extremely needed. I admit now that they are necessary, in the sense
+of the necessarian, but I can see little use for them, unless the
+production of Illusion (with few or many gaps in it) is needed for the
+world's progress. The laudation of the artist, the writer, and the actor
+returns anew with the end of the world's great year. But if any golden
+age comes back, the setting apart of the Amusement Monger will cease. If
+it does not cease, their antics will be the warnings of the intoxicated
+Helot.
+
+Yet without illusion one cannot write. Or so it seems to me. Is this
+writing period only another university after all? Perhaps teaching never
+ends, though the art of learning what is taught seems very rare. To
+write and "get there" in the meanest sense, so far as money is
+concerned, is the overcoming of innumerable obstacles. London taught me
+a great deal that I could not learn in Australia, or on the sea, or in
+any Texas, or British Columbia. But I came to London with scaled eyes,
+and tasted other poverty than that I knew. Illusion is mostly
+foreshortening of time. One wants to prophesy and to see. The chief
+lesson here is that prophets must be blind. The end of the race is the
+racing thereof after all. To do a little useful work (even though the
+useful may be a thousandth part of the useless) is the end of living.
+The only illusion worth keeping is that anything can be useful. So far
+my youth is not ended.
+
+
+
+
+MY FRIEND EL TORO
+
+
+It is not everyone who can make friends with a bull, and it is not every
+bull that one can make friends with. Yet next to one or two horses,
+about which I could spin long yarns, El Toro, the big brindled bull of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, is certainly nearest my
+heart. He was my friend, and sometimes my companion; he had a noble
+character for fighting, and in spite of his pugnacity he was amiability
+itself to most human beings. His final end, too, fills me with a sense
+of pathos, and enrages me against those who owned him. They were
+obviously incapable of understanding him as I did.
+
+When I went up to Los Guilucos from San Francisco to take up the
+position of stableman on that ranche, I had little notion of the full
+extent of my duties. What these were is perhaps irrelevant in the
+present connection. And yet it was because I had to work so incredibly
+hard, being often at it from six in the morning to eight or nine
+o'clock at night, that I made particular friends with El Toro, to give
+him his Spanish name. In all that western and south-western part of the
+United States there are remnants of Spanish or Mexican in the common
+talk. For California was once part of Mexico. El Toro became my friend
+and my refuge: when I was driven half-desperate by having ten important
+things to do at once he often came in and helped me to preserve an equal
+mind. I have little doubt that I should have discovered how to work this
+by myself, but as a matter of fact I was put up to some of his uses by
+the man whose place I took. He showed me all I had to do, and lectured
+me on the character of the hard-working lady who owned the place; and
+when I was dazed and stood wondering how one man could do all the
+stableman was supposed to accomplish between sunrise and sundown, Jack
+said, "And besides all this there is a bull!" He said it so oddly and so
+significantly that my heart sank. I imagined a very fierce and ferocious
+animal fit for a Spanish bull-ring, a sharp-horned Murcian good enough
+to try the nerve of the best matador who ever faced horns and a vicious
+charge. Then he took me round the barn and opened a stable. In it El
+Toro was tied to a manger by a rope and ring through his nose: he
+greeted us with a strangled whistle as he still lay down. "When you are
+hard driven good old El Toro will help you," said Jack, as he sat down
+on the bull's big shoulders and started to scratch his curl with a
+little piece of wood which had a blunt nail in it. As I stood El Toro
+chewed the cud and was obviously delighted at having his curl combed.
+
+The departing Jack delivered me another lecture on the uses of a mild
+and amiable but fighting bull on a ranche where a man was likely to be
+worried to death by a lady who had no notion of how much a man ought to
+do in a day. When he had finished he invited me to make friends with El
+Toro by also sitting on his back and scratching him with the blunt nail.
+I did as I was told, and though El Toro twisted his huge head round to
+inspect me he lay otherwise perfectly calm while I went on with his
+toilet. He evidently felt that I was an amiable character, and one well
+adapted to act as his own man. His views of me were confirmed when I
+brought him half a bucket of pears from the big orchard. With a parting
+slap and a sigh of regret which spoke well both for him and the bull,
+Jack went away to "fix" himself for travel. I was left in charge.
+
+How hard I worked on that Sonoma County ranch I can hardly say. I had
+horses in the stable and horses outside. The cattle outside were mine.
+Three hundred sheep I was responsible for. Some young motherless foals I
+nursed. I milked six cows. I chopped wood. I cleaned buggies. I drove
+wagons and carriages and cleaned and greased them. Sometimes I stood in
+the middle of the great barn-lot or barnyard and tore my hair in
+desperation. I had so much to attend to that only the strictest method
+enabled me to get through it. And, as Jack had told me would happen, my
+method was knocked endways by the requirements of the lady who was my
+"boss." What a woman wants done is always the most important thing on
+earth. She used to ask me to do up her acre of a garden in between times
+when the sheep wanted water or twenty horses required hay. She was
+amiable, kindly, but she never understood. At such times who could blame
+me if I went to the bull's stable when I saw her coming. Though the bull
+was the sweetest character on the ranch, she went in mortal terror of
+him. She would try to find me in the horse stable, but she would not
+come near El Toro for her very life. It was better to sit quietly with
+him and recover my equanimity while she called. I knew her well enough
+to know that in a quarter of an hour something else of the vastest
+importance would engage her attention and I should be free to attend
+more coolly to my own work.
+
+Yet sometimes she stuck to my track so closely that there was nothing
+for me to do but to turn El Toro loose. Then I could say, "Very well,
+madam, but in the meantime I must go after the bull." She knew what the
+bull being loose meant; he carried devastation wherever he went. He was
+the greatest fighter in the whole county. I had to get my whip and my
+fastest horse to try and catch him. I can hardly be blamed if I did not
+catch him till the evening. For in that way I got a wild kind of holiday
+on horseback and was saved from insanity. Certainly, when El Toro got
+away on the loose and was looking for other bulls to have a row with I
+could think of nothing else. Sometimes he got free by the rope rotting
+close up to his ring. In that case he went headlong. If he took the rope
+with him he sometimes trod on it and gave himself a nasty check.
+Usually, however, he got it across his big neck and kept it from falling
+to the ground. He never stopped for any gate. When he saw one he gave a
+bellow, charged it and went through the fragments with me after him. If
+I was really anxious to get him back at once I usually caught him within
+a mile. When I wanted a rest I only succeeded in turning him five or six
+miles away, after he had thrashed a bull or two belonging to other
+ranchers. No fence was any use to keep him out or in. On one occasion he
+broke into a barn in which a rash young bull was kept. When the row was
+over that barn stood sadly in need of repair: and so did the young
+pedigree bull. I may say that on this particular occasion El Toro got
+away entirely by himself, and I only knew he was free when I found the
+door of his stable in splinters.
+
+There was a magnificent difference between El Toro as I sat on him and
+scratched him with a nail and as he was when he turned himself loose for
+a happy day in the country. In the stable he was as mild as milk. I
+could have almost imagined him purring like a cat. He chewed the cud and
+made homely sloppy noises with his tongue, and regarded me with a calm,
+bovine gaze, which was as gentle as that of any pet cow's. I could have
+fallen asleep beside him. It is reported that my predecessor Jack, on
+one occasion, came home much the worse for liquor and was found
+reclining on El Toro. There was not a soul on the ranch who dared
+disturb the loving couple. But when the rope was parted and El Toro
+loped down the road to seek a row as keenly as any Irishman on a fair
+day, he was another guess sort of an animal. He carried his tail in the
+air and bellowed wildly to the hills. He threw out challenges to all and
+sundry. He gave it to be understood that the world and the fatness
+thereof were his. This was no mere braggadocio; it was not the misplaced
+confidence of a stall-fed bull in his mere weight; he really could
+fight, and though he was only on the warpath about once a month, there
+was not a bull in the valley which had not retained in his thick skull
+and muddy brains some recollection of El Toro's prowess. The only
+trouble about this, from my pet bull's point of view, was that he could
+rarely get up a row. Most of his possible enemies fled when he tooted
+his horn and waltzed into the arena through a smashed fence. He was
+magnificent and he was war incarnate.
+
+In that country, which is a hard-working country, there is really very
+little sport. Further south in California, the ease-loving Spanish
+people who remain among the Americans still love music and the dance. We
+worked, and worked hard; only Sundays brought us a little surcease from
+toil. All our notions of sport centred on our bull. I had many Italian
+co-workers, some Swedes, and an odd citizen of the United States. All
+alike agreed in being proud of El Toro. We yearned to match him against
+any bull in the State. Sometimes of a Sunday morning, after he had
+devastated the country and was back again, he held a kind of _levee_.
+The Italians brought him pears as I sat on him in triumph and combed him
+in places where he had not been wounded. He always forgot that I had
+come behind him and laced his tough hide with my stock-whip. He bore no
+malice, but took his fruit like a good child. I think he was almost as
+proud of himself as we were. Certainly we were proud of him. As for me,
+had I not ridden desperate miles after him: had I not interviewed
+outraged owners of other bulls and broken fences: had I not played the
+diplomat or the bully according to the treatment which seemed indicated?
+He was, properly speaking, my bull; I did not care if I had to spend
+three days mending our home gates and other's alien fences.
+
+Yes, it was a fine thing to gallop through that warm, bright,
+Californian air after El Toro, with the brown hills on either side and
+its patches of green vineyard brightening daily. It was freedom after
+the toil of axle-greasing and the slow work with sheep. It was better
+than grinding axes and trying to cut the tough knobs of vine stumps:
+better than grooming horses and milking cows. It made me think even more
+of the great Australian plains and of the Texas prairie and the round
+up. _Ay de mi_, I remember it now, sometimes, and I wish I was on
+horseback, swinging my whip and uttering diabolic yells, significant of
+the freedom of the spirit as I rush after the spirit of El Toro. For my
+pet, my brindled fighter, my own El Toro, whom I combed so delicately
+with a bent nail, for whom I gathered buckets of bruised but fat
+Californian pears, is now no more. They told me, when I visited Los
+Guilucos seven years ago, that he became difficult, morose, hard to
+handle, and they sold him. They sold this joyous incarnation of the
+spirit of battle and the pure joy of life for a mean and miserable
+thirteen dollars! When I think of it I almost fall to tears. So might
+some coward son of the seas sell a battleship for ten pounds because it
+was not suitable for a ferry-boat or a river yacht. I would rather a
+thousand times have paid the thirteen dollars myself and have taken him
+out to fight his last Armageddon and then have shot him on the lonely
+hills from which all other bulls had fled. These mean-souled,
+conscienceless moneymakers, who could not understand so brave, so fine a
+spirit, sold him to a Santa Rosa butcher! Shame on them, I say. I am
+sorry I ever revisited the Valley of the Seven Moons to hear such
+lamentable news. It made me unhappy then, makes me unhappy now. My only
+consolation is that once, and twice, and thrice, and yet again, I gave
+El Toro the chance of finding happiness in the conflict. And when I left
+Los Guilucos, before I returned to England, I sat upon his huge
+shoulders and scratched him most thoroughly, while ever and again I
+offered him a juicy and unbruised pear. On that occasion I pulled him
+the best fruit, and left windfalls for the ranging, greedy hogs. And as
+I fed and scratched him he lay on his hunkers in great content, and made
+pleasant noises as he remembered the day before. On that day, owing to
+the kindly feeling of me, his true and real friend, he had had a great
+time three miles towards Glenallen, and had beaten a newly-imported bull
+out of all sense of self-importance. He was pleased with himself,
+pleased with me, pleased with the world.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST
+
+
+Since taking to writing as a profession I have lost most of the interest
+I had in literature as literature pure and simple. That interest
+gradually faded and "Art for Art's sake," in the sense the simple in
+studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very
+rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual
+about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them
+betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is
+nothing, what they say is everything. So on the shelf to which I mostly
+resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little
+work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's
+Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental Bradshaw; many
+Baedekers; a Directory to the Indian Ocean and the China Seas; a big
+folding map of the United States; some books dealing with strategy, and
+some touching on medical knowledge, but principally pathology, and
+especially the pathology of the mind.
+
+Yet in spite of this utilitarian bent of my thoughts there are very many
+books I know and love and sometimes look into because of their
+associations. As I cannot understand (through some mental kink which my
+friends are wont to jeer at) how anyone can return again and again to a
+book for its own sake, I do not read what I know. As soon would I go
+back when it is my purpose to go forward. A book should serve its turn,
+do its work, and become a memory. To love books for their own sake is to
+be crystallised before old age comes on. Only the old are entitled to
+love the past. The work of the young lies in the present and the future.
+
+But still, in spite of my theories, I like to handle, if not to read,
+certain books which were read by me under curious and perhaps abnormal
+circumstances. If I do not open them it is due to a certain bashfulness,
+a subtle dislike of seeing myself as I was. Yet the books I read while
+tramping in America, such as _Sartor Resartus_, have the same attraction
+for me that a man may feel for a place. I carried the lucubrations of
+Teufelsdrockh with me as I wandered; I read them as I camped in the open
+upon the prairie; I slipped them into my pocket when I went shepherding
+in the Texan plateau south of the Panhandle.
+
+Another book which went with me on my tramps through Minnesota and Iowa
+was a tiny volume of Emerson's essays. This I loved less than I loved
+Carlyle, and I gave it to a railroad "section boss" in the north-west of
+Iowa because he was kind to me. When _Sartor Resartus_ had travelled
+with me through the Kicking Horse Pass and over the Selkirks into
+British Columbia, and was sucked dry, I gave it at last to a farming
+Englishman who lived not far from Kamloops. I remember that in the
+flyleaf I kept a rough diary of the terrible week I spent in climbing
+through the Selkirk Range with sore and wounded feet. It is perhaps
+little wonder that I associate Teufelsdrockh, the mind-wanderer, with
+those days of my own life. And yet, unless I live to be old, I shall
+never read the book again.
+
+The tramp, or traveller, or beach-comber, or general scallywag finds
+little time and little chance to read. And for the most part we must own
+he cares little for literature in any form. But I was not always
+wandering. I varied wandering with work, and while working at a sawmill
+on the coast, or close to it, in the lower Fraser River in British
+Columbia, I read much. In the town of New Westminster was a little
+public library, and I used to go thither after work if I was not too
+tired. But the work in a sawmill is very arduous to everyone in it, and
+while the winter kept away I had little energy to read. Presently,
+however, the season changed, and the bitter east winds came out of the
+mountains and fixed the river in ice and froze up our logs in the
+"boom," so that the saws were at last silent, and I was free to plunge
+among the books and roll and soak among them day and night.
+
+The library was very much mixed. It was indeed created upon a pile of
+miscellaneous matter left by British troops when they were stationed on
+the British Columbian mainland. There was much rubbish on the shelves,
+but among the rubbish I found many good books. For instance, that winter
+I read solidly through Gibbon's _Rome_, and refreshed my early memories
+of Mahomet, of Alaric, and of Attila. Those who imported fresh elements
+into the old were even then my greatest interest. I preferred the
+destroyers to the destroyed, being rather on the side of the gods than
+on the side of Cato. Lately, as I was returning from South Africa, I
+tried to read Gibbon once more, and I failed. He was too classic, too
+stately. I fell back on Froude, and was refreshed by the manner, if not
+always delighted by the matter.
+
+After emerging from the Imperial flood at the last chapter, I fell
+headlong into Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_, in nine volumes. Then I
+read Motley's _Netherlands_ and the _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, always
+terrible and picturesque since I had read it as a boy of eleven.
+
+At the sawmill there was but one man with whom I could talk on any
+matters of intellectual interest. He was a big man from Michigan and ran
+the shingle saw. We often discussed what I had lately read, and went
+away from discussion to argument concerning philosophy and theology. He
+was a most lovable person; as keen as a sharpened sawtooth, and a
+polemic but courteous atheist. His greatest sorrow in life was that his
+mother, a Middle State woman of ferocious religion, could not be kept in
+ignorance of his principles. We argued ethics sophistically as to
+whether a convinced agnostic might on occasion hide what he believed.
+
+Sometimes this friend of mine went to the library with me. He had the
+_penchant_ for science so common among the finer rising types of the
+lower classes. So I read Darwin's _Origin of Species_, and talked of it
+with my Michigan man. And then I took to Savage Landor and learnt some
+of his _Imaginary Conversations_ by heart. I could have repeated _AEsop_
+and _Rhodope_.
+
+But the one thing I for ever fell back upon was an old encyclopaedia. I
+should be afraid to say how much I read, but to it I owe, doubtless, a
+stock of extensive, if shallow, general knowledge. Certainly it appears
+to have influenced me to this day; for given a similar one I can wander
+from shipbuilding to St. Thomas Aquinas; from the Atomic Theory to the
+Marquis de Sade; from Kant to the building of dams; and never feel dull.
+
+Now when I come across any of these books I am filled with a curious
+melancholy. The _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ means more to me
+than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its
+driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's _Human
+Understanding_ recalls things no man can understand if he has not
+worked alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, I never
+hear him mentioned without seeing the mountains and glaciers of the
+Selkirks; in his pages is the sound of the wind and rain.
+
+There are some novels, too, which have attractions not all their own. I
+remember once walking into a store at Eagle Pass Landing on the Shushwap
+Lake and asking for a book. I was referred to a counter covered with
+bearskins, and beneath the hides I unearthed a pile of novels. The one I
+took was Thomas Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_. And another time I
+rode into Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and, while buying
+stores, saw Gissing's _Demos_ open in front of me. It was anonymous, but
+I knew it for his, and I read it as I rode slowly homeward down the
+Sonoma Valley, the Valley of the Seven Moons.
+
+These are but a few of the books that are burnt into one's memory as by
+fire. All I remember are not literature: perhaps I should reject many
+with scorn at the present day; nevertheless, they have a value to me
+greater than the price set upon many precious folios. I propose one of
+these days to make a shelf among my shelves sacred to the books which I
+read under curious circumstances. I cannot but regret that I often had
+nothing to read at the most interesting times. So far as I can
+recollect, I got through five days' starvation in Australia without as
+much as a newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON
+
+
+It was late in May or early in June, for I cannot now remember the exact
+date, that I landed in Apia, in the island of Upolu. Naturally enough
+that island was not to me so much the centre of Anglo-American and
+German rivalries as the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, then become the
+literary deity of the Pacific. In a dozen shops in Honolulu I had seen
+little plaster busts of him; here and there I came across his
+photograph. And I had a theory about him to put to the test. Though I
+was not, and am not, one of those who rage against over-great praise,
+when there is any true foundation for it, I had never been able to
+understand the laudation of which he was the subject. At that time, and
+until the fragment of _Weir of Hermiston_ was given to the world,
+nothing but his one short story about the thief and poet, Villon, had
+seemed to me to be really great, really to command or even to be an
+excuse for his being in the position in which his critics had placed
+him. Yet I had read _The Wrecker_, _The Ebb Tide_, _The Beach of
+Falesa_, _Kidnapped_, _Catriona_, _The Master of Ballantrae_, and the
+_New Arabian Nights_. I came to the conclusion that, as most of the
+organic chorus of approval came from men who knew him, he must be (as
+all writers, I think, should be) immeasurably greater than his books. I
+was prepared then for a personality, and I found it. When his name is
+mentioned I no longer think of any of his works, but of a sweet-eyed,
+thin, brown ghost of a man whom I first saw upon horseback in a grove of
+cocoanut palms by the sounding surges of a tropic sea. There are
+writers, and not a few of them, whose work it is a pleasure to read,
+while it is a pain to know them, a disappointment, almost an
+unhappiness, to be in their disillusioning company. They have given the
+best to the world. Robert Louis Stevenson never gave his best, for his
+best was himself.
+
+At any time of the year the Navigator Islands are truly tropical, and
+whether the sun inclines towards Cancer or Capricorn, Apia is a bath of
+warm heat. As soon as the _Monowai_ dropped her anchor inside the
+opening of the reef that forms the only decent harbour in all the group,
+I went ashore in haste. Our time was short, but three or four hours, and
+I could afford neither the time nor the money to stay there till the
+next steamer. I had much to do in Australia, and was not a little
+exercised in mind as to how I should ever be able to get round the world
+at all unless I once more shipped before the mast. I was, in fact, so
+hard put to it in the matter of cash, that when the hotel-keeper asked
+three dollars for a pony on which to ride to Vailima, I refused to pay
+it, and went away believing that after all I should not see him whom I
+most desired to meet. Yet it was possible, if not likely, that he would
+come down to visit the one fortnightly link with the great world from
+which he was an exile. I had to trust to chance, and in the meantime
+walked the long street of Apia and viewed the Samoans, whom he so loved,
+with vivid interest. These people, riven and torn by internal
+dissensions between Mataafa and Malietoa, and honeycombed by
+Anglo-American and German intrigue, were the most interesting and the
+noblest that I had met since I foregathered for a time with a wandering
+band of Blackfeet Indians close to Calgary beneath the shadows of the
+Rocky Mountains. Their dress, their customs, and their free and noble
+carriage, yet unspoiled by civilisation, appealed to me greatly. I could
+understand as I saw them walk how Stevenson delighted in them. Man and
+woman alike looked me and the whole world in the face, and went by,
+proud, yet modest, and with the smile of a happy, unconquered race.
+
+As I walked with half a dozen curious indifferents whom the hazards of
+travel had made my companions, we turned from the main road into the
+seclusion of a shaded group of palms, and as I went I saw coming towards
+me a mounted white man behind whom rode a native. As he came nearer I
+looked at him without curiosity, for, as the time passed, I was becoming
+reconciled by all there was to see to the fact that I might not meet
+this exiled Scot. And yet, as he neared and passed me, I knew that I
+knew him, that he was familiar; and very presently I was aware that this
+sense of familiarity was not, as so often happens to a traveller, the
+awakened memory of a type. This was an individual and a personality. I
+stopped and stared after him, and suddenly roused myself. Surely this
+was Robert Louis Stevenson, and this his man. So might the ghosts of
+Crusoe and Friday pass one on the shore of Juan Fernandez.
+
+I called the "boy" and gave him my card, and asked him to overtake his
+master. In another moment my literary apparition, this chief among the
+Samoans, was shaking hands with me. He alighted from his horse, and we
+walked together towards the town. I fell a victim to him, and forgot
+that he wrote. His writings were what packed dates might be to one who
+sat for the first time under a palm in some far oasis; they were but ice
+in a tumbler compared with seracs. He was first a man, and then a
+writer. The pitiful opposite is too common.
+
+I think, indeed I am sure, for I know he could not lie, that he was
+pleased to see me. What I represented to him then I hardly reckoned at
+the time, but I was a messenger from the great world of men; I moved
+close to the heart of things; I was fresh from San Francisco, from New
+York, from London. He spoke like an exile, but one not discouraged.
+Though his physique was of the frailest (I had noted with astonishment
+that his thigh as he sat on horseback was hardly thicker than my
+forearm), he was alert and gently eager. That soft, brown eye which held
+me was full of humour, of pathos, of tenderness, yet I could imagine it
+capable of indignation and of power. It might be that his body was
+dying, but his mind was young, elastic, and unspoiled by selfishness or
+affectation. He had his regrets; they concerned the Samoans greatly.
+
+"Had I come here fifteen years ago I might have ruled these islands."
+
+He imagined it possible that international intrigue might not have
+flourished under him. Never had I seen so fragile a man who would be
+king. He owned, with a shyly comic glance, that he had leanings towards
+buccaneering. The man of action, were he but some shaggy-bearded
+shellback, appealed to him. His own physique was his apology for being
+merely a writer of novels.
+
+We went on board the steamer, and at his request I bade a steward show
+his faithful henchman over her. In the meantime we sat in the saloon and
+drank "soft" drinks. It pleased him to talk, and he spoke fluently in a
+voice that was musical. He touched a hundred subjects; he developed a
+theory of matriarchy. Men loved to steal; women were naturally
+receivers. They adored property; their minds ran on possession; they
+were domestic materialists. We talked of socialism, of Bully Hayes, of
+Royat, of Rudyard Kipling. He regretted greatly not having seen the
+author of _Plain Tales from the Hills_.
+
+"He was once coming here. Even now I believe there is mail-matter of his
+rotting at the post-office."
+
+I asked him to accept a book I had brought from England, hoping to be
+able to give it to him. It was the only book of mine that I thought
+worthy of his acceptance. That he knew it pleased me. But he always
+desired to please, and pleased without any effort. When the boy came
+back from viewing the internal arrangements of the _Monowai_, he sat
+down with us as a free warrior. He was more a friend than a servant;
+Stevenson treated him as the head of a clan in his old home might treat
+a worthy follower. As there was yet an hour before the vessel sailed I
+went on shore with him again. We were rowed there by a Samoan in a
+waistcloth. His head was whitened by the lime which many of the natives
+use to bleach their dark locks to a fashionable red.
+
+The air was hot and the sea glittered under an intense sun. The rollers
+from the roadstead broke upon the reef. The outer ocean was a very
+wonderful tropic blue; inside the reefs the water was calmer, greener,
+more unlike anything that can be seen in northern latitudes. A little
+island inside the lagoon glared with red rock in the sunlight; cocoanut
+palms adorned it gracefully; beyond again was the deeper blue of ocean;
+the island itself, a mass of foliage, melted beautifully into the lucid
+atmosphere. Yonder, said Stevenson, lay Vailima that I was not to see.
+But I had seen the island and the man, and the natural colour and glory
+of both.
+
+As we went ashore he handed the book which I had given him to his
+follower. He thought it necessary to explain to me that etiquette
+demanded that no chief should carry anything. And etiquette was rigid
+there.
+
+"Mrs Grundy," he remarked, "is essentially a savage institution."
+
+We went together to the post-office. And in the street outside, while
+many passed and greeted "Tusitala" in the soft, native speech, we
+parted. I saw him ride away, and saw him wave his hand to me as he
+turned once more into the dark grove wherein I had met him in the year
+of his death.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY IN CAPETOWN
+
+
+I went across the Parade, which every morning is full of cheap-jack
+auctioneers selling all things under the sun to Kaffirs, Malays,
+coolies, towards Rondebosch and Wynberg. At the Castle the electric tram
+passed me, and I jumped on board and went, at the least, as fast as an
+English slow train. The wind was blowing and the dust flew, but ahead of
+us ran a huge electricity-driven water-cart, a very water tram, which
+laid the red clouds for us. Yet in London we travel painfully in
+omnibuses and horse-trams, and the rare water-cart is still drawn by
+horses.
+
+The road towards Rondebosch, where Mr Rhodes lived, is full of interest.
+It reminded me dimly of a road in Ceylon: the colour of it was so red,
+and the reddish tree trunks and heavy foliage were almost tropical in
+character. Many of the houses are no more than one-storey bungalows;
+half the folks one saw were coloured; a rare Malay woman flaunted
+colour like a tropic bird. Avenues of pines resembled huge scrub; they
+cast strong shadows even in the greyness of the day. Far above the huge
+ramparts of Table Mountain lay the clouds, and the wind whistled
+mournfully from the organ pipes of the Devil's Peak. In unoccupied lands
+were great patches of wild arum, and suddenly I saw the gaunt Australian
+blue gum, which flourishes here just as well as the English oak. Two
+white gums shone among sombrest pines. They took my mind suddenly back
+to the bush of the Murray Hills, for there they gleam like sunlit
+lighthouses among the darker and more melancholy timber of the heights.
+
+The houses grew fewer and fewer beyond Rondebosch, and at last we came
+to Wynberg, a quiet little suburban town. The tram ran through and
+beyond it, and I got off and walked for a while among the side roads.
+And the aspect of the country was so quiet, and yet so rich, that I
+wondered how any could throw doubts upon the wonderful value of the
+country. Surely this was a spot worth fighting for, and, more certainly
+still, it was a place for peace. A long contemplative walk brought me
+back to Rondebosch, and again I took the train-like tram and went back
+to busy Capetown.
+
+In any new town the heights about and above it appeal strongly to every
+wanderer. I had no time to spare for the ascent of Table Mountain, and
+the tablecloth of clouds indeed forbade me to attempt it. But someone
+had spoken to me of the Kloof road, which leads to the saddleback
+between the Lion's Head and Table Mountain, so, taking the Kloof Street
+tram, I ran with it to its stopping-place and found the road. There the
+houses are more scattered; the streets are thin. But about every house
+is foliage; in every garden are flowers. As I mounted the steep,
+well-kept road I came upon pine woods. Across the valley, or the Kloof,
+I saw the lower grassy slopes of Table Mountain, where the trees
+dwindled till they dotted the hill-side like spare scrub. Above the
+trees is a cut in the mountain, above that the bare grass, and then the
+frowning weather-worn bastions of the mountain with its ancient
+horizontal strata. It is cut and scarped into gullies and chimneys; for
+the mountain climber it offers difficult and impossible climbs at every
+point. Down the upper gullies hung wisps of ragged cloud, pouring over
+from the plateau 4000 feet above the town.
+
+On the left of the true Table Mountain there is a rugged and ragged
+dip, and further still the rocks rise again in the sharper pinnacles of
+the Devil's Peak. That slopes away till it runs down into the
+house-dotted Cape flats, and beyond it lie Rondebosch, Wynberg and
+Constantia. Across the grey and misty flats other mountains
+rise--mountains of a strange shape which suggests a peculiar and unusual
+geological formation.
+
+Although the day was cool and the southerly wind had a biting quality
+about it, yet the whole aspect of the world about me was intensely
+sub-tropical. In heavy sunlight it would seem part of the countries
+north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The close-set trees, seen from above,
+appear like scrub, like close-set ti-tree. They are massed at the top,
+and among them lie white houses. Beyond them the lower slopes of the
+Devil's Peak are yellow and red sand, but the grey-green waters of the
+bay, which is shaped like a great hyperbola, are edged with white sand.
+
+Among the pines the rhythmic wind rose and fell; it whistled and wailed
+and died away. Beneath me came the faint sound of men calling; there was
+the clink of hammers upon stone.
+
+But suddenly the town was lost among the trees, and when I sat down at
+last upon a seat I might have been among the woods above the Castle of
+Chillon, and, seen dimly among the foliage, the heights yonder could
+have been taken for the slopes of Arvel or Sonchaud. A bird whistled a
+short, repeated, melancholy song, and suddenly I remembered I had seen
+no sparrows here. A blackcap stared at me and fled; its triple note was
+repeated from bush to bush.
+
+The wind rose again as I sat, but did not chill me in my sheltered
+hollow. It rose and fell in wavelike rhythm like the far thunder of
+waves upon a rock-bound coast. Then came silence, and again the wind was
+like the sound of a distant waterfall. There for one moment I caught the
+resinous smell of pine. It drew me back to the Rocky Mountains, and then
+to the woods above Zermatt, where I had last smelt that healthiest and
+most pleasing of woodland odours. I rose again and walked on.
+
+Presently I gained a loftier height, and saw the Lion's Head above me, a
+bold shield knob of rock rising out of silver trees, whose foliage is a
+pale glaucous green, resembling that of young eucalypti. Then, turning,
+I saw Capetown spread out beneath me, almost as one sees greater Naples
+from the Belvedere of the San Martino monastery. The whitish-grey town
+is furrowed into canyon-like streets. Beyond the town and over the flats
+was a view like that from Camaldoli. The foreground was scrub and pine
+and deep red earth, whereon men were building a new house. May fate send
+me here again when the sun is hot and the under world is all aglow!
+
+I came at last to the little wind-swept divide between Table Mountain
+and the Lion's Head. Here Capetown was lost to me, and I stood among
+sandy wastes where thin pines and whin-like bushes grow. And further
+still was the cold grey sea with the waves breaking on a rocky point and
+a little island all awash with white water.
+
+Though beyond this divide the air was cold as death, the slopes of Table
+Mountain sweeping to the sea were full of colour; deep, strong, stern
+colour. When the sun shines and full summer rules upon the Cape
+Peninsula the place must be glorious. Even when I saw it an artist would
+wonder how it was that with such a chill wind the colour remained. And
+above the coloured lower slopes this new view of Table Mountain
+suggested a serried rank of sphinxes staring out across the desert sea.
+The nearest peak of the mountain is weathered, cracked and scarred, and
+it in are two chimneys that appear accessible only for the oreads who
+block the way with their smoky clouds. In the far north-eastern distance
+the grey headlands melted into the grey ocean. But beneath me were the
+tender green of the birch-like silver tree and the rich young leaves of
+the transplanted English oak.
+
+
+
+
+VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE
+
+
+Among the problems which remain perpetually interesting are those which
+deal with the influence of environment on races, and that of races on
+environment. What happens when the people are plastic and their
+circumstances rigid? What when the people are rigid and unyielding, and
+their surroundings fluent and unabiding? And does character depend on
+what is outside, or does the dominant quality of a race remain, as some
+vainly think, for ever? These are puzzling questions, but not entirely
+beyond conjecture for one who has heard the siren songs of the African
+veldt, the Australian plain, and the American prairie.
+
+He who consciously observes usually observes the obvious, and may rank
+as a discoverer only among the unobservant. Truth may be looked for, but
+he who hunts her shall rarely find when the truth he seeks is something
+not suited for scientific formulae. The real observer is he who does not
+observe, but is gradually aware that he knows. Sometimes he does not
+learn that he is wise till long years have passed, and then perhaps the
+mechanical maxim of a mechanical eye-server of Nature shall startle him
+into a sense of deep abiding, but perhaps incommunicable, knowledge. So
+comes the knowledge of mountain, moor and stream; so rises the Aphrodite
+truth of the sea, born from the foam that surges round the Horn, or
+floats silently upon the beach of some lonely coral island; and so grows
+the knowledge of vast stretches of dim inland continents.
+
+I spent my hours (let them be called months) in Africa seeking vainly
+after facts that after all were of no importance. Politics are of
+to-day, but human nature is of eternity. And while I sought what I could
+hardly find, in one cold clear dawn I stumbled upon the truth concerning
+the white people of the veldt, whom we call Boers. And yet it was not
+stumbling; I had but rediscovered something that I had known of old in
+other lands, far east and far west of Africa. When first I entered on
+the terraces of the Karroo I tried to build up for myself the character
+of the lone horsemen who ride across these spaces, and though I was
+solitary, and saw sunrises, the construction of the type eluded me. I
+saw the big plain and the flat-topped banded hills that had sunk into
+their minds. I saw the ruddy dawn glow, and the ruddier glory of sundown
+as the sun bit into the edge of the horizon, and I knew that here
+somewhere lay the secret of the race, even though I could not find it.
+And I knew too that I had discovered sister secrets in long past days;
+and I saw that, not in the intellect as one knows it, but in some
+revived instinct, revived it might be by one of the senses, lay the clue
+to what I sought. What did these people think, or what lay beneath
+thought in them? It was something akin to what I had felt somewhere,
+that I knew. But the sun went down and left me in the dark; or it rose
+clear of the distant hills and drowned me in daylight, and still I did
+not know. Then there was the babble of politics in my ears, and I spoke
+of Reform and such urgent matters in the dusty streets of windy
+Johannesburg.
+
+But one day, as it chanced, I came upon the secret; and then I found it
+was incommunicable, as all real secrets are. For your true secret is an
+informing sensation, and no sensation can resolve itself other than by
+negatives. I had spent a weary, an unutterably weary, day in a coach
+upon the Transvaal uplands, and came in the dark to the house of a Boer
+who served travellers with unspeakable food and gave them such
+accommodation as might be. It was midnight when I arrived, and all his
+beds were full of those who were journeying in the opposite direction.
+He made me a couch on the floor in a kind of lumber-room, and, softened
+child of civilisation that I had become, I growled by myself at what he
+gave, and wondered what, in the name of the devil who wanders over the
+earth, I was doing there. And how could he endure it? How, indeed. I
+fell asleep, and the next minute, which was six hours later, I awoke,
+and stumbled with a dusty mouth into the remaining night, not yet become
+dawn. Such an hour seemed unpropitious. My bones ached; I lamented my
+ancient hardness in the time when a board or a sheet of stringy bark was
+soft; I felt a touch of fever, my throat was dry, a hard hot day of
+discomfort was before me. In the dim dusk I saw the mules gathered by
+the coach, which had yet to do sixty miles. A bucket invited me; I
+washed my hot hands and face, and walked away from the buildings into
+the open. Then very suddenly and without any warning I understood why
+the Boer existed, and why, in his absurd perversity, he rather
+preferred existing as he was; and I saw that even I, like other
+Englishmen, could be subdued to the veldt. The air was crisp and chill;
+the dawn began to break in a pale olive band in the lower east; the
+stars were bright overhead; the morning star was even yet resplendent.
+But these things I had seen on the southern Karroo. It was not my eyes
+alone that told me the old secret, the same old secret that I had known.
+I knew then, and at once, as an infinite peace poured over me, that all
+my senses were required to bring me back to nature, and that one alone
+was helpless. Now with what I saw came what I heard. I heard the clatter
+of harness, the jingle of a bell, the low of a cow, the trampling of the
+mules. And I smelt with rapture, with delight, the complex odours of the
+farm that sat so solitary in the world; but above all the chill moving
+odour of the great plain itself. This, or these, made a strange,
+primitive pleasure that I had known in Australia, in Texas, even in a
+farm upon the edge of a wild Westmorland moor. My senses informed my
+intellect. I shook hands with the creatures of the veldt, for I was of
+their tribe. Even my feet trod the earth pounded by the mules, the
+horses and the oxen, with a sensation that was new and old. Why did not
+spurs jingle on my heels? I felt strong and once more a man. So feels
+the Boer, and so does he love, but he cannot even try to communicate the
+incommunicable. For, after all, the secret is like the smell of a flower
+that few have seen. Its odour is not the odour of the rose, not that of
+any lily, not that of any herb; it is its own odour only.
+
+What is the difference, then, in those who ride the high Texan plateaux
+or scour the sage-bush plains of Nevada, or follow sheep or cattle in
+the salt bush country of the lingering Lachlan? There is much
+difference; there is little difference; there is no difference. The
+great difference is racial, the small difference is human, the lack of
+any difference is animal and primaeval. In all alike, in any country
+where spaces are wide, the child that was the ancestor of the man arises
+with its truthful unconscious curiosity and faith in Nature. Here it may
+be that one gallops, here one trots, here again one walks. But all alike
+pull the bridle and snuff the air and find it good, and see the grass
+grow or dwindle, and watch the stars and the passing seasons, and find
+the world very fresh and very sweet and very simple.
+
+
+
+
+NEAR MAFEKING
+
+
+To a man who has lived and travelled in the United States of America and
+the not yet United States of Australia, there is one characteristic of
+South Africa which is particularly noticeable. It is its oneness as a
+country. And this oneness is all the more remarkable when we take into
+consideration its racial and political divisions. A bird's-eye view of
+America is beyond one; a similar glance at the seaboard of Australia
+from Rockhampton even round to Albany (which is then only round half its
+circle) gives me a mental crick in the neck. But in thinking of Africa,
+south of the Zambesi, there is no such mental difficulty. Even the
+existence of the Transvaal seemed to me an accident, and, if inevitable,
+one which Nature herself protests against. Some day South Africa must be
+federated, but if any politician asks me, "Under which king, Bezonian,
+speak or die," I shall elect (in these pages at least) to die.
+
+But though this disunited unity seemed to me a salient feature in
+cis-Zambesian Africa, it was the differences in that natural ring fence
+which attracted most of my attention as a story-writer even as a
+story-writer who so far has only written one tale about it. I began to
+ask myself how it was that, with one eminent exception, our African
+fiction writers had confined themselves to the native races, and the
+friction between these races and white men, Boer or English, when there
+were infinitely more attractive themes at hand. Perhaps it may seem like
+begging the question to call the political inter-play of the Cape
+Colony, of the Transvaal, and the Free State more interesting than tales
+in which the highest "white" interest appears in a love story betwixt
+some English wanderer and an impossible Boer maiden, or such as relate
+the rise and fall of Chaka and Ketchwayo. And yet to me the mass of
+intrigue, the political friction, the onward march of races, and the
+conflicts above and below board, called for greater attention than the
+Zulu, even at his best.
+
+To a novelist (who sometimes pretends to think, however much such an
+unpopular tendency be hidden) environment and its necessary results are
+of infinite interest. Upon the Karroo, even when in the train, I tried
+to build up the aloof and lonely Boer, and, though I failed, there came
+to me in whiffs (like far odours borne on a westerly wind) some
+suggestions that I really understood deep in my mind how he came to be.
+The chill fresh air of the morning, before the sun was yet above the
+horizon, recalled to me some ancient dawns in far Australia: and then
+again I thought of days upon the Texan plateaux. But still the secret of
+the lone-riding Boer, who loves a country of magnificent distances,
+escaped me.
+
+But one early dawn, when I was half-way between Krugersdorp and
+Mafeking, I came out upon the veldt in darkness, which was a lucid
+darkness, and in the silent crisp air I stumbled upon the truth. Betwixt
+sleep and waking as I walked I felt infinite peace pour over me. So had
+the silent Campo Santo at Pisa affected me; so had I felt for a moment
+among the ancient ruins of the abbey at Rivaulx. In this dawn hour came
+a time of reversion. I too was very solitary, and loved my solitude. The
+necessities of civilisation were necessities no more: I needed luxury
+even less than I needed news. I cared for nothing that the men of a city
+ask: there was space before me and room to ride. The lack of small
+urgent stimuli, the barren growth of civilisation's weedy fields, left
+me to the great and simple organic impulses of the outstretched world.
+And in that moment I perceived that this silence is the very life of the
+wandering Boer, even though he knows it not; for it has sunk so deep
+into him that he is unaware of it. He belongs not to this age, nor to
+any age we know.
+
+For one long year, twenty years ago, I lived upon a great plain in
+Australia, and now I remembered how slowly I had been able to divest
+myself of my feeling of loneliness. But when I came at last to be at
+home upon that mighty stretch of earth, which seemed a summit, I grew to
+love it and to see with opened eyes its infinite charm that could be
+told to none. I knew that the need of much talk was a false need: as
+false as the diseased craving for books.
+
+To feel this was true of the widespread wandering folks who once came
+out of crowded Holland to resume a more ancient type, instructed me in
+what a false relation they stand to the rolling dun war-cloud of
+"Progress." They called in the unreverted Hollander to stand between
+them and the men of mines, and now they love the Hollander as a man
+loves a hated cousin, who is a man of his blood, but in nothing like
+him. But anything was, and is, better than to stand face to face with
+busy crowds. To have to talk, to argue, to explain to the unsympathetic
+was overmuch. The veldt called to them: it is their passion. As one
+labours in London and sinks into a dream, remembering the hills wherein
+he spends a lonely summer, among Westmorland's fells and by the becks,
+so the Boer, called cityward, looks back upon the wide and lonely veldt
+which is never too wide and never lonelier to him than to any of the
+beasts he loves to hunt.
+
+But the fauna disappear, and ancient civilisations crumble. And those
+who revert are once more overwhelmed by civilisation. It is a great and
+pathetic story, a story as old as the tales told in stone by the
+preserved remnants of prehistoric monsters.
+
+Yet, speaking of monsters, what is a stranger monster (to an eye that
+hates it or merely wonders) than the many-jointed Rand demon crawling
+along the line of banked outcrop? I saw it first by day, when it seemed
+an elongated wire-drawn Manchester in a pure air, but I remember it
+best as I saw it when returning from Pretoria. First I beheld the gleam
+of electric lights, and remembered the glow of Fargo in Eastern Dakota
+as I saw it across the prairie. Then the mines were no longer separate:
+they joined together and became like a fiery reptile, a dragon in the
+outcrop, clawing deep with every joint, wounding the earth with every
+claw, as a centipede wounds with every poisoned foot. The white residues
+gleamed beneath the moon, from every smoke stack poured smoke: the
+dragon breathed. Then the great white cyanide tanks were like bosses on
+the beast; the train stopped, and the battery roared. That night, for it
+was a silent and windless night, I heard forty miles of batteries
+beating on the beach of my mind like a great sea. And men laboured in
+the bowels of the earth for gold. But out upon the veldt it was very
+quiet, "quietly shining to the quiet moon." I understood then that it
+was no wonder if the simple and stolid Dutchman had a peculiar
+abhorrence for a town, which, even at night, was never at rest. In
+Johannesburg is neither rest, nor peace, nor any school for nobility of
+thought; it destroys the pleasures of the simple, and satisfies not the
+desires of those whose simplicity is their least striking feature.
+
+Upon the veldt and the Karroo, and even through the Mapani scrub country
+that lies north of Lobatsi, simplicity is the chief characteristic of
+the scenery. As I went by Victoria West (I had spent the night talking
+politics with the civillest Dutchmen) I came in early morning to the
+first Karroo I had seen. The air was tonic, like an exhilarating wine
+with some wonderful elixir in it other than alcohol, and though the
+country reminded me in places of vast plains in New South Wales, it
+lacked, or seemed to lack, the perpetual brooding melancholy that
+invests the great Austral island. As I stood on the platform of the car,
+the sun, not yet risen, gilded level clouds. The light reddened and the
+gold died: and the sudden sun sparkled like a big star, and heaved a
+round shoulder up between two of Africa's flat-topped hills, which were
+yet blue in the far distance. Then the level light of earliest day
+poured across the plateau, yellow with thin grass, which began to ask
+for rain. The picture left upon my mind is without detail, and made up
+of broad masses. Even a railway station, with some few gum trees, and
+the pinky cloud of peach blossom about the little house, was
+excellently simple and homely. A distant farm, with smoke rising beneath
+the shadow of a little kopje, a band of emerald green, where irrigation
+sent its flow of water, a thousand sheep with a blanketed Kaffir minding
+them, filled the eye with satisfaction.
+
+Out of such a country should come simple lives. By the sport of fate the
+cruellest complexity of politics is to be found there.
+
+And yet who can declare that the environment shall not in time exert its
+inevitable influence on the busy crowding English, and make them or
+their sons glad to sit upon their stoeps and smoke and look out upon the
+veldt with a quiet satisfaction which is unuttered and unutterable? The
+Karroo and the veldt do not change except according to the seasons; they
+pour their influences for ever upon those who ride across them as the
+Drakensberg Mountains send their waters down upon Natal beneath their
+mighty wall. And even now the busy Englishman complains that his
+African-born son is lazy and seems more content to live than to be for
+ever working. Each country exacts a certain amount of energy from those
+who live there; as one judges from the Boer, the tax is not over heavy.
+
+And as in time to come the great centre of interest shifts north, as
+now it seems to shift, one may prophesy with some hope, certainly
+without dread of such a result, that a more energetic Dutch race, and a
+less energetic English one, will fuse together, and look back upon their
+childish quarrels with mere historic interest. Perhaps the Dutch in
+those times will become the aristocrats, as they have done in New York;
+they may even see their chance of going for ever out of politics. For
+they never yet sat down to the political gaming-table gladly.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE FRASER RIVER
+
+
+The first experience I had in regard to gold mining was in Ballarat,
+when a well-known miner and business man in that pretty town took me
+round the old alluvial diggings and pointed out the most celebrated
+claims. These (in 1879) were, of course, deserted or left to an
+occasional Chinese "fossicker," who rewashed the rejected pay dirt,
+which occasionally has enough gold in it to satisfy the easily-pleased
+Mongolian. I went with my friend that same day into the Black Horse
+Mine, and saw quartz crushing for the first time; but, naturally enough,
+I took far more interest in the alluvial workings that can be managed by
+few friends than in operations which required capital and the
+importation of stamping machinery from England; and Ballarat, rich as it
+once was for the single miner, is now left to corporations.
+
+One of the strangest features of an old gold-mining district is its
+wasted and upturned appearance. The whole of the surrounding country is,
+as it were, eviscerated. It is all hills and hollows, which shine and
+glare in the hot sun and look exceedingly desolate. When, in addition,
+the town itself fails and fades for want of other means of support, and
+the houses fall into rack and ruin as I have seen in Oregon, the place
+resembles a disordered room seen in the morning after a gambling
+debauch. The town is happy which is able to reform and live henceforth
+on agriculture, as is now the case to a great extent with Ballarat and
+with Sandhurst, which has discarded its famous name of Bendigo.
+
+To a miner, or indeed to anyone in want of money, as I usually was when
+knocking about in Australian or American mining districts, the one
+painful thing is to know where untold quantities of gold lie without
+being able to get a single pennyweight of it. I remember on more than
+one occasion sitting on the banks of the Fraser River in British
+Columbia, or of the Illinois River in Oregon, pondering on the absurdity
+of my needing a hundred dollars when millions were in front of me under
+those fast-flowing streams. Those who know nothing about gold countries
+may ask how I knew there were millions there. The answer is simple
+enough. First let me say a few words about one common process of mining.
+
+When it is discovered that there is a certain quantity of gold in the
+vast deposits of gravel which are found in many places along the Pacific
+slope, but especially in Oregon and California, water, brought in a
+"flume" or aqueduct from a higher level, is directed, by means of a pipe
+and nozzle fixed on a movable stand, against the crumbling bench, which
+perhaps contains only two or three shillings-worth of gold to the ton.
+This is washed down into a sluice made of wooden boards, in which
+"riffles," or pieces of wood, are placed to stop the metal as it flows
+along in the turbid rush of water. Some amalgamated copper plates are
+put in suitable places to catch the lighter gold, or else the water
+which contains it is allowed to run into a more slowly-flowing aqueduct,
+which gives the finer scales time to settle. This, roughly put, is the
+hydraulic method of mining which causes so much trouble between the
+agricultural and mining interests in California; for the finer detritus
+of this washing, called technically "slickens," fills up the rivers,
+causes them to overflow and deposit what is by no means a fertilising
+material on the pastures of the Golden State.
+
+Now, what man does here in a small way, and with infinite labour and
+pains, Nature has been doing on a grand scale for unnumbered centuries.
+Let us, for instance, take the Fraser River and its tributary the
+Thompson, which is again made up of the North and South Forks, which
+unite at Kamloops, as the main rivers do at Lytton. The whole of the
+vast extent of mountainous country drained by these streams is known to
+be more or less auriferous. Many places, such as Cariboo, are, or were,
+richly so; and there are few spots in that part which will not yield
+what miners know as a "colour" of gold--that is, gold just sufficient to
+see, even if it is not enough to pay for working by our slight human
+methods. I have been in parts of Oregon where one might get "colour" by
+pulling up the bunches of grass that grew sparsely on a thin soil which
+just covered the rocks. But the united volumes of the Fraser and the two
+Thompsons and all their tributaries have been doing an enormous
+gold-washing business for a geological period; and all that portion of
+British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar
+to the bench of gravel which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And
+just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through
+his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the
+natural sluice which is known as the Fraser Canyon.
+
+This canyon, which is cut through the range of mountains known
+erroneously as the Cascades, is about forty miles long, if we count from
+Lytton and Yale. In its narrowest part, at Hell Gate, a child may throw
+a stone across; and its current is tremendous. So rapidly does it run,
+that no boat can venture upon it, and nothing but a salmon can stem its
+stream. It is full, too, of whirlpools; and at times the under rush is
+so strong that the surface appears stationary. What its depth may be it
+is impossible to tell. But one thing is certain, and that is, that in
+the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities
+beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No,
+it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper canyon, there is a
+place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built
+up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will,
+perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the shade.
+Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on
+that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Canyon, on the South Fork of
+the Thompson, when that clear blue stream was at a low stage, there was
+a great landslip, which for some eighty minutes dammed back the waters
+into a lake. The whole country side gathered there with carts and
+buckets, scraping up the mud and gold from the bottom. Many thousands of
+dollars were taken out of the dry river bed before the dam gave way to
+the rising waters. And, if there was gold there, what is there even now
+in the great main sluice of the vastest natural gold mining concern ever
+set going, which has never yet since it began indulged in a "cleanup?"
+
+I have been asked sometimes, when speaking about the Fraser and other
+rivers, which are undoubtedly gold traps, why it was that nobody
+attempted to turn them. Of course, my questioners were neither engineers
+nor geographers. Certainly an inspection of the map of British Columbia
+would show the utter impossibility of such a scheme. To dam the Fraser
+would be like turning the Amazon. Yet once I do not doubt that it was
+dammed, and that all the upper country was a vast lake, until the
+waters found the way through the Cascades which it has now cut into a
+canyon. Otherwise I cannot account for the vast benches and terraces
+which rise along the Thompson. Indeed, the whole of the Dry Belt down to
+Lytton has the appearance, to an eye only slightly cognisant of
+geological evidence, of an ancient lacustrine valley.
+
+Yet much work of a similar kind to damming this river has been done in
+California; and even now there is a company at the great task of turning
+the Feather River (which is also undoubtedly gold bearing) through a
+tunnel in order to work a large portion of its bed. Whether they will
+succeed or not is perhaps doubtful; but if they do, the returns will
+probably be large, as they would be if anyone were able to turn aside
+the Illinois in Southern Oregon, or the Rogue River, which has been
+mining in the Siskiyou Range for untold generations.
+
+I feel certain that all human gold discovering has been a mere nothing;
+that our methods are only faint and feeble imitations of Nature, and
+that only by circumventing her shall we be able to reach the richer
+reward. But by the very vastness of her operations we are precluded
+from imitating the sluice robber, who does not work himself, but "cleans
+up" the rich boxes of some mining company which has undertaken a scheme
+too large for any one man.
+
+
+
+
+OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
+
+
+The whole of this vast country--this sea of mountains, as it has very
+appropriately been called--used practically to belong to the Hudson's
+Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and
+its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were,
+and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the
+forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were
+so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the
+trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all
+the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially
+unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired
+by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost
+incredible price, as it seems to us now, for the company made sure of
+three or four hundred per cent, at the very least, and occasionally
+more; so that a ten shilling Birmingham musket brought in several pounds
+when the pelts for which it was exchanged were sold in the London
+market.
+
+Their dominion of exclusion passed away with the discovery of gold in
+Cariboo, and the consequent assumption of direct rule by the Government.
+The palmy days of mining are looked back on with great regret by the old
+miners, and many are the stories I have heard by the camp fire or the
+hotel bar, which explained how it was that the narrator was still poor,
+and how So-and-so became rich. There were few men who were successful in
+keeping what they had made by luck or hard work, yet gold dust flew
+round freely, and provisions were at famine prices. I knew one man who
+said he had paid forty-two dollars (or nearly nine pounds) for six
+pills. They were dear but necessary; and as the man who possessed them
+had a corner in drugs, he was able to name his price. At that time, too,
+some men made large sums of money by mere physical labour, and for
+packing food on their backs to the mines they received a dollar for
+every pound weight they brought in.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, who is now an hotel-keeper at Kamloops, was a
+living example of the strange freaks fortune played men in Cariboo. He
+was offered a share in a mine for nothing, but refused it, and bought
+into another. Gold was taken out of the first one to the tune of 50,000
+dollars, and the other took all the money invested in it and never
+returned a cent. He was in despair about one mine, and tried to sell out
+in vain. He was thinking of giving up his share for nothing, when gold
+was found in quantities. I think he makes more out of whisky, however,
+than he ever did at Cariboo, though he still hankers after the old
+exciting times and the prospects of the gold-miner's toast, "Here's a
+dollar to the pan, the bed-rock pitching, and the gravel turning blue."
+
+Nowadays there are still plenty of men who traverse the country in all
+directions looking for new finds. They are called "prospectors," and go
+about with a pony packed with a pick, a shovel, and a few necessaries,
+hunting chiefly for quartz veins, and they talk of nothing but "quartz,"
+"bed-rock," "leads," gold and silver, and so many ounces to the ton. It
+is now many years ago since I was working on a small cattle ranch in the
+Kamloops district, when one of these men, a tall, grey-haired old fellow
+named Patterson, came by. My employer knew him, and asked him to stay.
+He bored us to death the whole evening, and showed innumerable
+specimens, which truly were not very promising, as it seemed to us. His
+great contempt for farming was very characteristic of the species.
+"What's a few head of rowdy steers?" asked Mr Patterson; "why, any day I
+might strike ten thousand dollars." "Yes," I answered mischievously;
+"and any day you mightn't." He turned and glared at me, demanding what I
+knew about mining. "Not a great deal," said I; "but I have seen mining
+here and in Australia, and for one that makes anything a hundred die
+dead broke." "Well," he replied, scornfully "I'd rather die that way
+than go ploughing, and I tell you I know where there is money to be
+made. Just wait till I can get hold of a capitalist."
+
+That is another of the poor prospector's stock cries; but as a general
+rule capitalists are wary, and don't invest in such "wild cat"
+speculations.
+
+Next morning Mr Patterson proposed that I should go along with him and
+he would make my fortune. "What at?" said I. "Quartz mining?" "Not this
+time," was his answer; "it's placer" (alluvial). I was not in the least
+particular then what I did if I could only get good wages, so I wanted
+to know what he proposed giving me. "Bed-rock wages," said he. Now that
+means good money if a strike is made, and nothing if it is not. So I
+shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of
+contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found
+dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion.
+
+Just as I was about to leave British Columbia for Washington Territory
+there were very good reports of the new Similkameen diggings, and for
+the first and only time in my life I was very nearly taking the gold
+fever. But though I saw much of the gold that had been taken out of the
+creek, I managed to restrain myself, and was glad of it afterwards, when
+I learned from a friend of mine in town that very few had made anything
+out of it, and that most had returned to New Westminster penniless and
+in rags.
+
+Railroads and modern progress are nowadays civilising the country to a
+great extent, though I am by no means sure that civilisation is a good
+thing in itself. However, manners are much better than they used to be
+in the old times, and it might be hard now to find an instance of
+ignorance parallel to one which my friend Mr H. told me. It appears that
+a dinner was to be given in the earlier days to some great official from
+England, and an English lady, who knew how such things should be done,
+was appointed manager. She determined that everything should be in good
+style, and ordered even such extravagant and unknown luxuries as napkins
+and finger-glasses. Among those who sat at the well-appointed table were
+miners, cattle-men, and so on, and one of them on sitting down took up
+his finger-bowl, and saying, "By golly, I'm thirsty," emptied it at a
+draught. Then, to add horror on horror, he trumpeted loudly in his
+napkin and put it in his breast pocket.
+
+The progress of civilisation, however, destroys the Indians and their
+virtues. One Indian woman, who was married to a friend of mine--and a
+remarkably intelligent woman she was--one day remarked to me that before
+white men came into the country the women of her tribe (she was a
+Ptsean) were good and modest but that now that was all gone. It is true
+enough. This same woman was remarkable among the general run of her
+class, and spoke very good English, being capable of making a joke too.
+A half-bred Indian, working for her husband, one day spoke
+contemptuously of his mother's tribe, and Mrs ----, being a full-blooded
+Indian, did not like it. She asked him if he was an American, and, after
+overwhelming him with sarcasm, turned him out of doors.
+
+As a matter of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially
+those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of
+degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to
+supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all
+times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to
+continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often
+dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one
+handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the
+Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on
+the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.
+
+The lake and river steamboats are not always safe to be in, and some of
+the pilotage and engineering is reckless in the extreme. The captains
+are too often given to drink overmuch, and when an intoxicated man is at
+the wheel in a river full of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and
+those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes
+exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was
+certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a
+"riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great
+swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How
+much steam have you, Jack?" "Eighty," answered Jack.
+
+"Fire up, fire up!" said the captain, as he jammed the tiller over; "we
+shall never make the riffle on that."
+
+The firemen went to work, and threw in more wood, and presently we
+approached the rapid. The captain leant out of the pilot house.
+
+"Give it her, Jack," he yelled excitedly.
+
+The answer given by Jack scared me, for I knew quite well what she ought
+to bear.
+
+"There's a hundred and twenty on her now!"
+
+"Well, maybe it will do;" and the captain's head retreated.
+
+On we went, slowly crawling and fighting against the swift stream which
+tore by us. We got about half-way up, and we gradually stayed in one
+position, and even went back a trifle. The captain yelled and shouted
+for more steam yet, and then I retreated as far as I could, and sat on
+the taffrail, to be as far as possible from the boiler, which I believed
+would explode every moment. But Jack obeyed orders, and rammed and raked
+at the fires until the gauge showed 160 lb., and we got over at last.
+But I confess I did feel nervous.
+
+This happened about ten miles below Yale, and at that very spot the
+tiller-ropes of the same boat once parted, and they had to let her
+drift. Fortunately, she hung for a few moments in an eddy behind a big
+rock until they spliced them again; but it was a close call with
+everyone on board. A steamer once blew up there, and most of the crew
+and passengers were killed outright or drowned.
+
+Above Yale the river is not navigable until Savona's Ferry is reached.
+That is on the Kamloops Lake, and thence east up the Thompson and the
+lakes there is navigation to Spallamacheen. Once the owners of the
+_Peerless_ ran her from Savona down to Cook's Ferry, just in order to
+see if it could be done. The down-stream trip was done in three hours,
+but it took three weeks to get her back again, and then her progress had
+to be aided with ropes from the shore; so it was not deemed advisable to
+make the trip regularly.
+
+As for the river in the main Fraser canyon, it is nothing more nor less
+than a perfect hell of waters; and though Mr Onderdonk, who had the
+lower British Columbia contract for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built
+a boat to run on it, the first time the _Skuzzy_ let go of the bank she
+ran ashore. She was taken to pieces and rebuilt on the lakes. The
+railroad people wanted her at first on the lower river, and asked a Mr
+Moore, who is well known as a daring steamboatman, to take her down. He
+said he would undertake it, but demanded so high a fee, including a
+thousand dollars for his wife if he was drowned, that his offer was
+refused. Yet it was well worth almost any money, for it would have been
+a very hazardous undertaking--as bad as, or even worse than, the _Maid
+of the Mist_ going through the rapids below Niagara.
+
+
+
+
+A TALK WITH KRUGER
+
+
+It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in
+Pretoria. There was an air of lassitude about the town. President Steyn,
+of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch
+still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had
+ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch
+as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to
+meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened
+wisdom brought about the compact. As for myself, I thought little enough
+of the matter then, for Pretoria seemed curiously familiar to me, though
+I had never been there, and had never so much as seen a photograph of it
+until I saw one in Johannesburg. For some time I could not understand
+why it seemed familiar. It is true that it had some resemblance to a
+tenth-rate American town in which the Australian gum-trees had been
+acclimatised, as they have been in some malarious spots in California.
+And in places I seemed to recall Americanised Honolulu. Yet it was not
+this which made me feel I knew Pretoria. It was something in the aspect
+of the people, something in the air of the men, combined doubtless with
+topographical reminiscence. And when I came to my hotel and had settled
+down, I began to see why I knew it. The whole atmosphere of the city
+reeked of the very beginnings of finance. It was the haunt of the
+concession-monger; of the lobbyist; of the men who wanted something.
+These I had seen before in some American State capitals; the anxious
+face of the concession-hunter had a family likeness to the man of
+Lombard Street: the obsession of the gold-seeker was visible on every
+other face I looked at.
+
+In the hotels they sat in rows: some were silent, some talked anxiously,
+some were in spirits and spoke with cheerfulness. It pleased my solitary
+fancy to label them. These had got their concessions, they were going
+away; these still hoped strongly, and were going to-morrow and
+to-morrow; these still held on, and were going later; these again had
+ceased to hope, but still stayed as a sickened miner will hang round a
+played-out claim. They were all gamblers, and his Honour the President
+was the Professional Gambler who kept the House, who dealt the cards,
+and too often (as they thought) "raked in the pot," or took his heavy
+commission. And I had nothing to ask for; all I wanted was to see the
+tables if I could, and have a talk with him who kept them.
+
+The President is an accessible man. He does not hide behind his dignity:
+he affects a patriarchal simplicity, and is ever ready to receive his
+own people or the stranger within his gates. His unaffected affectation
+is to be a simpleton of character: he tells all alike that he is a
+simple old man, and expects everyone to chuckle at the transparent
+absurdity of the notion. Was it possible, then, for me to see him and
+have a talk with him? I was told to apply to a well-known Pretorian
+journalist. As I was also a journalist of sorts, and not wholly unknown,
+it was highly probable he would assist me in my desire not to leave
+Pretoria without seeing the Father of his people. But my informant
+added: "The President will say nothing--he can say nothing in very few
+words. If you want him to talk, say 'Rhodes.'" I thanked my new hotel
+acquaintance and and said I would say "Rhodes" if it seemed necessary.
+And next afternoon I walked down Church Street with the journalist W----
+and came to the President's house. We had an appointment, and after
+waiting half-an-hour in the _stoep_ with four or five typical and silent
+Boers, Mr Kruger came out in company with a notorious Pretorian
+financier, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth
+more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies.
+And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to
+each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W----,
+who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant _taal_.
+
+If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have
+seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his
+face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and
+smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not
+always attain that accuracy of marksmanship supposed to be
+characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are
+not quite clean; his clothes were probably never intended to fit him.
+And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes
+from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity
+is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is
+sometimes seen under the _blouse_ of an old French peasant who still
+remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt
+face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt
+had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi.
+Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers
+crowned its heights, here before me was something that was passing away.
+But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening
+Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British
+Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he
+had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers
+chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had
+been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And
+so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely
+rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.
+
+Then we talked about Johannesburg, and the President puffed smoke
+against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a
+very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of
+the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and
+declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted,
+but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut
+off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed
+at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed
+again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot
+of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet.
+I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by saying that they
+had even more reason to be loyal than the English, seeing that if
+England were ousted from the Continent the Germans would come in; but he
+evaded the question at issue by asserting that if the Cape Dutch
+intrigued against the Queen he would neither aid nor countenance them.
+Then, as the conversation seemed in danger of languishing, I did what I
+had been told to do and mentioned Rhodes.
+
+It was odd to observe the instant change in the President's demeanour.
+He lost his stolidity, and became voluble and emphatic. Rhodes was
+evidently his sore point; and he abused him with fervour and with
+emphasis. All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes
+had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa
+would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose
+chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon
+and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked
+himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his
+declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of
+the journalist who was interpreting for me. Every time that heavy hand
+came down I saw poor W---- wince; he was shaken to his foundations. But
+he endured the punishment like a martyr, and said nothing. I dropped ice
+into the President's boiling mind by asking him if he thought it would
+remove danger from the situation if Mr Rhodes and Mr Chamberlain were
+effectually muzzled by the Imperial Government. His peasant-like caution
+instantly returned; he smoked steadily for a minute, and then declared
+he would say nothing on that point. It was not necessary; he had showed,
+without the shadow of a doubt, that he was an old man who was, in a
+sense, insane on one point. Rhodes was his fixed pathological idea. This
+Tenterden steeple was the cause of the revolutionary Goodwin Sands.
+
+As a last question about the Cape Dutch, I asked if, when he declared he
+would not aid them against the Queen, he would act against them; he
+replied denying in general terms the right to revolt. I said, "But the
+right of revolution is the final safeguard of liberty"; and his Honour
+did nothing but grunt. From his point of view he could neither deny nor
+affirm this safely, and so our interview came to an end.
+
+
+
+
+TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA
+
+
+At that time I acknowledge that trout-fishing as a real art I knew
+nothing of; whipping English waters had been almost entirely denied me,
+and with the exception of a week on a river near Oswestry, and a day in
+Cornwall, I had never thrown a fly over a pool where a trout might
+reasonably be supposed to exist. But in British Columbia I used to catch
+them in quantities and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by
+an expert) that using a grasshopper as a bait is no better than
+poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line,"
+or _Cocculus indicus_. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of
+the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to
+fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small
+tin can with those lively insects.
+
+Owing to the fact that I was working for my living on a ranch at Cherry
+Creek, I had no chance of fishing on week-days, but on Sundays, after
+breakfast, I used to take my primitive willow rod from the roof, where
+it had been for six days, see that the ten or twelve feet of string was
+as sound at least as my frayed yard of gut, examine my hook, and then
+start hunting grasshoppers. That meant a deal of violent exercise,
+especially if the wind was blowing, for they fly down it or are driven
+down it with sufficient velocity to make a man run. Moreover, near the
+ranche they were mostly of a very surprising alertness, owing,
+doubtless, to the fact that the fowls, in their eagerness to support
+Darwin's theory of natural selection, soon picked up the slow and lazy
+ones. But after an hour's hard work I usually got some fifty or so, and
+that would last for a whole day, or at anyrate for a whole afternoon.
+Then I went to the creek, fishing up it and down it with a democratic
+disregard of authority.
+
+Cherry Creek was only a small stream; here and there it rattled over
+rocks, and stayed in a deep pool. Now and again it ran as fast as the
+water in a narrow flume; and then the banks grew canyon-like for fifty
+yards. But for almost the whole of its length it went through dense
+brush, so dense in parts that it defied anyone but a bear to get through
+it. But when I did reach a secluded pool and manage to thrust my rod out
+over the water and slowly unwind my bait, I was almost always rewarded
+by a lively mountain trout as long as my hand, for they never ran over
+six inches. The grasshopper was absolutely deadly; no fish seemed able
+to resist it, and sometimes in ten minutes I took six, or even ten, out
+of a pool as big as an ordinary dining-room table. The fact of the
+matter is that the greatest difficulty lay in getting to the water. When
+I fished up stream into the narrow gorge through which the creek ran, I
+often walked four or five miles before I got the small tin bucket, which
+was my creel, half full; yet I knew that if I could have really fished
+five hundred yards of it I might have gone home with a full catch.
+
+But it was not so much the fishing as the strange solitude, the thick,
+lonely brush, that made such excursions pleasant. Every now and again I
+came to a spur of the mountains, and climbed up into the open and lay
+among the red barked bull-pines. If I went a little higher I could
+catch sight of the dun-coloured hills which ran down, as I knew, to the
+waters of Kamloops Lake, only five miles distant. If I felt hungry, I
+could easily light a fire and broil the trout; with a bit of bread,
+carried in my pocket, and a draught from a spring or the creek itself, I
+made a hearty meal. And all day long I saw no human being. Every now and
+again I might come across a half-wild bullock or a wilder horse, or see
+the track of a wolf, but that was all, save the song of the birds, the
+wind among the trees, and the ceaseless murmurs of the creek. In the
+evening I made my way back in time to give the cook what I had caught.
+
+In California I used to fish in the small creek running at the back of
+Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, and, though the trout were by no
+means so plentiful there as in British Columbia, I often caught two or
+three dozen in the afternoon. But there I had to use worms, and they
+seemed far less attractive than the soft, sweet body of the grasshopper.
+Yet once I caught a very large fish for that part of the country. He was
+evidently a fish with a history, as I caught him in a big tank sunk in
+the earth, which supplied the ranch, and was itself supplied by a long
+flume. As I went home past this tank one day I carelessly dropped the
+bait in, and it was instantly seized by a trout I knew to be larger than
+I had yet hooked. But, though he was big, he had very little chance. The
+smooth sides of the tank afforded him no hole to rush for, and, after a
+short struggle, I hauled him out. My only fear was that my rotten line
+would part, for he weighed almost a pound, and I was accustomed to fish
+of less than seven ounces.
+
+I often wondered in British Columbia why so few people fished. In some
+of the creeks running into the Fraser River, near Yale, I have seen
+splendid trout of two or three pounds; there would be a dozen in sight
+at once very often. They always seemed in good condition, too, which was
+more than could be said for the salmon, for those were half of them very
+white with the fungus, as one could easily see on the Kamloops or
+Shushwap Lakes from the bows of the steamer if the water was smooth.
+
+Perhaps the reason there are no trout-fishers out there is that those
+who care sufficiently for any kind of sport find it more to their taste
+to hunt deer, bear or cariboo. When these have disappeared, as they
+must, seeing the ruthless manner in which they are slaughtered, many may
+be glad to take to the milder and less ferocious trout. The country
+certainly affords very good fishing, and the spring and summer climate
+is perfect. If it were only a little nearer they might be properly
+educated, until they were far too wary to fall into the simple traps
+laid for them by a man who fished with a piece of string and carried a
+bucket for a creel. It may have been my brutal ignorance of tying flies,
+but when I tried them with what I could furbish up, they seemed to
+resent the thing as an insult. So there seems some hope of their being
+capable of instruction.
+
+
+
+
+ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE
+
+
+When I went to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I
+could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York
+slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did
+not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by
+any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one
+spends enough money; but I was at that time in no position to sling
+dollars about, and, besides, I wanted some of the English rust knocked
+off me. Living in England ends in making a man poor of resource. I
+hardly know an ordinary Londoner who would not shiver at the notion of
+being "dead broke" in any foreign city, to say nothing of one on the
+other side of the world; and though it is not a pleasant experience it
+has some charms and many uses. It wakes a man up, shows him the real
+world again, and makes him know his own value once more. So I started
+for New York in rather a devil-may-care spirit, without the slightest
+chance of doing the business in comfort. And my misfortunes began at
+once in that city.
+
+To save time and money I went in the first quick vessel that
+crossed--the _Lucania_; and I went second-class. It was an experience to
+run twenty-two knots an hour; but it has made me greedy since. I want to
+do any future journeys in a torpedo-boat. As to the second-class crowd,
+they were, as they always are on board Western ocean boats, a set of
+hogs. The difference between first and second-class passengers is one of
+knowing when and where to spit, to put no fine point on it. I was glad
+when we reached New York on that account.
+
+I meant to stay there three days, but my business took me a fortnight,
+and money flowed like water. It soaked up dollars like a new gold mine,
+and I saw what I meant for the Eastern journey sink like water in sand.
+But I had to get to San Francisco. I took that journey in sections. All
+my trouble in New York was to get across the continent. I let the
+Pacific take care of itself, being sure I could conquer that difficulty
+when the time came. I recommend this frame of mind to all travellers. I
+acquired the habit myself in the United States when I jumped trains
+instead of paying my fare. It is most useful to think of no more than
+the matter in hand, for then we can use one's whole faculties at one
+time. Too much forethought is fatal to progress, and if I had really
+considered difficulties I could have stayed in England and written a
+story instead, a most loathsome _pis aller_.
+
+I do not mean to say that I was without money. All I do mean is that I
+had less than half that I should have had, unless I meant to cross the
+continent as a tramp in a "side-door Pullman," as the tramping
+fraternity call a box car, and the Pacific in the steerage. As a matter
+of fact, I proposed to do neither. I wanted a free pass over one of the
+American railroads, and if there had been time I should have got it. I
+tackled the agents, and "struck" them for a pass. I assured them that I
+was a person of illimitable influence, and that if I rode over their
+system, and simply mentioned the fact casually on my return, all Europe
+would follow me. I insinuated that their traffic returns would rise to
+heights unheard of: that their rivals would smash and go into the hands
+of receivers. It was indeed a beautiful, beautiful game, and reminded
+one of poker, but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't
+come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little
+time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco
+Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got
+euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of
+forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that
+ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap
+train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made
+me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very
+glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning
+not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds
+in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who
+cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith
+which was not unrewarded in the end.
+
+My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight
+till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney
+was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the
+transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of
+the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times and some rustling to get
+through it all. I had to rustle.
+
+As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was
+on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the
+slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was
+quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty
+rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which
+runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one
+station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the
+depot of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always;
+I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And
+now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was
+like a buried city with dust and cinders.
+
+"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly
+porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."
+
+Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers
+mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted
+basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and
+discovered somebody underneath that at anyrate reminded me of myself,
+and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had
+gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.
+
+From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats
+with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the
+cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the
+conductor grinned.
+
+"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.
+
+So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I
+knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't
+have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one
+nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a
+racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I
+chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was
+going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I
+must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my
+H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about
+the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up
+greatly, and we were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras
+and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd
+picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the
+passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat
+at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The
+dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white
+sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable
+body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the
+elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for
+ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the
+daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly
+with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for
+the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently,
+and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a
+third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely
+needed. I went out to inspect the city.
+
+It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The
+gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt to the
+Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their
+monotonous ugliness into the sky.
+
+In this city I had starved for three solid months, picking up a meal
+where I could find it. I had been without a bed for three weeks. I had
+shared begged food with beggars. Now I came back to it under far
+different circumstances. I walked in the afternoon to some of my old
+haunts, and, coming to the hideous den of a common lodging-house where I
+had once lived, my flesh crept. I remembered that once the agent for a
+directory had put down "Charles Roberts, labourer," as living there and
+I tried to get back into my old skin. For a while I succeeded, but the
+experiment was horrible, and I was glad to drop the dead past and leave
+the grimy water front where I had looked and looked in vain for work.
+
+For a week I stayed in San Francisco. Then I had an experience which
+falls to few men, for I went to stay as a visitor at Los Guilucos, where
+I had once been a stableman. The situation was interesting, for there
+were still many men in the ranch who had worked with me; even the
+Chinese cook was there. In the old days he had often appealed to me for
+more wood to give his devouring dragon of a stove. But things were
+altered now. On the first morning of my stay I saw the wood pile, and
+could not help taking my coat off and lighting into it with the axe. The
+Chinaman came running out with uplifted hands.
+
+"Oh, Mr Loberts, Mr Loberts, you no splittee me wood, you too much welly
+kind gentleman, you no splittee me wood!"
+
+So things change, but I split him a barrow load all the same.
+
+I was sorry to leave the ranch and go back to San Francisco, where nine
+men out of ten in all degrees of society are much too disagreeable for
+words. The only really decent fellows I met there were a Frenchman and a
+young mining engineer named Brandt, son of Dr Brandt, at Royat, who was
+once R. L. Stevenson's physician; and above all an Irish surveyor and
+architect, the most charming and genial of men. The Californians
+themselves are less worth knowing as they appear to have money; the
+moment they begin to fancy themselves a cut above the vulgar, their
+vulgarity is their chief feature, stupendous as the Rocky Mountains, as
+obvious as the Grand Duke of Johannisberg's nose. But I had other things
+to think of than the social parodies of the Slope.
+
+I found at the Poste Restante a letter from my agent, which was a frank
+statement of misfortune and ill-luck. There was not a red cent in it,
+and I had only a hundred dollars left. This was just enough to pay my
+steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there
+was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one
+of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long
+article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new
+standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to
+wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times
+as high as in the West.
+
+I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me
+for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash
+a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never
+regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still
+retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information
+to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed,
+approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I
+washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man,
+who helped me over the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go
+steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my
+ante I meant staying with the game.
+
+For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend
+in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York
+for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old
+friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as
+important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I
+saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this
+gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short.
+It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty
+is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on
+the strength of it.
+
+In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have
+written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and
+it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the
+gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort,
+but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I
+found it was all right. I was not only all right, for inside of an hour
+I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for
+the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that
+I might have got it for less, but I have found it a good business rule
+never to lose a good thing by trying for a better. I had accommodation
+equal to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Of course, I regretted I
+dare not ask them one hundred dollars for condescending to go in their
+boat. If I had been full of money I might have tried it. However, I was
+quite happy and satisfied. That I might land in Sydney with nothing did
+not trouble me. Three days after I went on board the steamer, and was
+seen off by my friend the Irishman and one other.
+
+I had never sailed on the Pacific, or at least that part of it, before,
+and its wonders were strange to me. I had not seen coral islands, nor
+cocoanuts growing. It grieved me that I could not afford to stay in
+Honolulu and visit Kilauea. I only remained some hours, which I spent in
+prowling about the town, which is like a tenth-rate city in America. And
+the business American has his claw into it for good. The Hawaiians, in
+truth, seem to care little. They go blithely in the streets crowned and
+garlanded with flowers, and even the leprosy that strikes one now and
+again with worse than living death seems far away.
+
+On board the _Monowai_, most comfortable of ships, commanded by Captain
+Carey, best of skippers, life was easy and delightful. Our one romance
+was between San Francisco and the Islands, for an individual, with most
+incredible cheek, managed to go first-class from California almost to
+Honolulu without a ticket. Two days from the Islands he was bowled out,
+and set to shovel coals. We left him in gaol at Honolulu, and steamed
+south of Samoa.
+
+It was good to be at last in the tropics, deep into them, and to wear
+white all day and feel the heat tempered by the Trades. We played games
+and sang and lazed and loafed, and life had no troubles. Why should I
+think of future difficulties when there were none at hand, and the
+weather was lovely? We ran at last into Apia, the harbour of Upolu, the
+island where the late Robert Louis Stevenson lived. I rushed ashore, met
+him, spent three more than pleasant hours with him, and away again round
+the island reefs with our noses pointed for Auckland.
+
+Some of our passengers had left us at Honolulu, others dropped off at
+Samoa, but after Auckland, when the weather grew quite cold, we were a
+thin little band, and our spirits oozed away. We could not keep things
+lively, the decks seemed empty, I was glad to run into Sydney harbour. I
+found I had just enough money to get to Melbourne if I went at once, so
+I caught the mail train and soon smelt the Australian bush that I had
+left in 1878. On reaching Melbourne at mid-day I had fifteen shillings
+left. Dumping my baggage at the station, I hunted up my chief friend, a
+journalist. The very first thing he handed me was a cablegram demanding
+my instant return to England. My rage can be imagined; it would take
+strong language to describe it, for I had meant to stay in Australia for
+a year, and write a book about it from another standpoint than _Land
+Travel and Seafaring_.
+
+I hadn't even enough money to live anywhere. I couldn't cable for any,
+for if my instructions had been obeyed, all available cash was now on
+its way to me, when I couldn't wait for it. I talked it over with my
+friend.
+
+"Have you no money?" I asked, but then I knew he had none.
+
+"Nobody has any money in Australia," he answered. "If it is known you
+have a sovereign in cash you will be pestered in Collins Square by
+millionaires, whose wealth is locked up in moribund banks, for mere
+half-crowns as a temporary accommodation."
+
+I pondered a while.
+
+"I have a plan whereby we may get a trifle in the meantime. You can
+write a long interview with me and I will take the money. Sit down and
+don't move."
+
+He remonstrated feebly.
+
+"My dear fellow, why not do it yourself?"
+
+"It would be taking a mean advantage of other writers," I said.
+"Besides, I'm in no mood to write."
+
+Overcome by my generosity, he at last wrote a column and a half. I shall
+always treasure that interview, for when he tired I dictated some of it
+myself. The only thing I really objected to was his determination not to
+let me say what I meant to say about the Australian financial outlook.
+Under the circumstance of the failure of credit, the matter touched me
+deeply, and was a personal grievance. But he persisted that if I were
+too pessimistic the article would never see type, and I couldn't have
+the money. I gave way, and condescended to have hopes about Australia.
+But even when I got his cheque I was not much further forward.
+
+I went to my banker's agents and asked them to cash a cheque. Would I
+pay for a cable home and out? No I would not, because I didn't know
+whether my account was overdrawn or not. All I knew was that if they
+would cash a cheque I would telegraph from Port Said or Naples and see
+it was met. So that failed. I tried Cook's, who had cashed cheques for
+me on the Continent. They also spoke of cabling. I explained matters,
+but they had no faith. Nobody had.
+
+I began to think I would have to work my passage, for I was determined
+to get away inside of two weeks or perish. I looked up the vessels in
+port in case I might know some of them. They were all strangers. In such
+cases, unless one is in a hurry such as I was, for my return was urgent,
+it is best to tackle some cargo boat. It is often possible to get a
+passage for a quarter the mail-boat fare, for the tramp steamer's
+captain looks on the fare as his own and never mentions passengers to
+the owner. But I couldn't wait for a good old tramp, and at last, in
+despair, my friend and a friend of his and I clubbed everything together
+that was valuable and raised a fare to Naples on the proceeds. I left
+Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and
+got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse
+snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we
+caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the
+breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend. I
+raised five pounds on a cheque with the steward and spent the whole of
+it in rickshaws and carriages. I saw what one could in the time, for I
+breakfasted at one place, lunched at another, dined at a third. I mean
+one of these days to spend a week or two at the Galle Face Hotel,
+Colombo. At Mount Lavinia I got the one dinner of my life. I cordially
+recommend the cooking.
+
+We ran to Cape Guardafui in a gale, a sticky hot gale which made life
+unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied
+the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two
+Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But
+my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the
+vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand
+looked like snow-drifts. In the day the far-off deserts were a dream of
+red sands, and red sand mingled with the horizon. At last we came to the
+Mediterranean and I landed at Naples. The driver of my carrozzella took
+my last money, so I put up at a good hotel and wired to England at the
+hotel-keeper's expense. I went overland to London, and was back there in
+four days under four months from the time I started from New York.
+
+There are scores of people--I meet them every day--who are in a constant
+state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it
+is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to
+know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A
+first-class ticket from London _via_ New York, San Francisco, Sydney,
+Melbourne, Colombo, the Suez, Naples, Gibraltar and Plymouth will run to
+L125, without including the cost of sleeping-car accommodation and food
+in the American trans-continental journey. If he stays anywhere it is a
+mighty knowing and economical traveller who gets off under L200 or L250
+by the time he turns up in London.
+
+Now as to what it cost me when I meant doing it moderately. It cost L8
+to New York. Owing to business in New York I stayed there a fortnight,
+and it cost me $4 a day, say L11. The journey to San Francisco ran to
+L12 including provisions. The Pacific voyage was L22 in all. The fare
+from Sydney to Melbourne for ocean passengers is L2. 1s. 6d. To Naples I
+paid L32. Another L12 brought me to London. This runs up to L99.
+
+If I had not been in a hurry I could have done the homeward part for
+less. If I had been twenty-five I would have gone steerage. But with
+time to spare for looking up a tramp I might have easily got to London
+as the only passenger for L20. If I had not stayed in New York and had
+had the time I could have cut expenses to L70.
+
+But any young man, writer or not, who wants to see a bit of the world,
+can do it on that if he has the grit to rough it. He can cut the
+Atlantic journey to L3, and learn some things he never knew while doing
+it. I can put anyone up to crossing America for L15 at any time. But if
+he spends L20 he can see Niagara, the work of God, and Chicago, the
+_chef d'oeuvre_ of the Devil. The Pacific can be done for L20
+steerage; and he can stay in Australia a month for L10, and a year for
+L20 if he knows what I know. The steerage fare home is L16. I fancy it
+would be the best investment that any young fellow could make. He would
+learn more of what life is than the world of London would teach him in
+the ordinary grooves in ten years.
+
+
+
+
+BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS
+
+
+On Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, where I worked for six
+months in 1886, there was a very large orchard. I know how large it was
+on account of having to do much too much work with the apricots, plums
+and cherries; and day by day, as one fruit or the other ripened, I
+cursed the capable climate of the Pacific slope, which produced so
+largely. Fortunately, however, the lady who owned the ranch did not
+trouble her head greatly about the almonds, of which we had a very fine
+double avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and
+there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian
+vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had
+sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of
+picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday, and
+cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but
+for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember
+my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied
+themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the
+stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked
+suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree
+overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken
+and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to
+the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on
+the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big
+limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni
+walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe.
+Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just
+there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out
+a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of
+almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked
+them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground,
+for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower.
+Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every
+likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the
+avenue--sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite
+as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.
+
+Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies,
+who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable
+climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store
+up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never
+been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were
+inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never
+corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths
+of winter, why he had been fool enough to drop his savings into a bank
+with the conscience of an ill-regulated automatic machine, which takes
+everything and gives nothing back. If he had really needed the almonds,
+they would have been put in an accessible spot. Though this perhaps is a
+scientific view, I must acknowledge that we were grateful to the birds
+who stored them for us, and, by making fools of themselves, gave us the
+opportunity of gathering, if not grapes from thistles, at least almonds
+from oaks.
+
+Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of
+the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn
+in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation
+commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage
+grubs--that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave
+these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is
+no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the
+jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an
+explanation--to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn
+mystery--is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated
+the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or
+accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into--indeed they will
+place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the
+bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid
+on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in
+so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holes they had
+themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the
+bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It
+must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find
+it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to
+have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder,
+less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there
+were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the
+Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there
+from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.
+
+
+
+
+IN CORSICA
+
+
+Once, no doubt, Corsica was a savage, untamed, untrimmed kind of
+country, and a man's life was little safer than it is to-day in the
+neighbouring island of Sardinia. There were brigands and bandits and
+families engaged in the private warfare of the vendetta, so that things
+were as lively and exciting as they get in parts of Virginia at times.
+Killing was certainly no murder, and even yet the vendetta flourishes to
+some extent. There is nothing harder than to get a high-spirited
+southern population ready to acknowledge the majesty of the law. The
+attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young
+East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his
+particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't
+be able to get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself.
+
+Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's
+time. French justice is a fairly good brand of justice after all. The
+magistrates administer the law, and the system of military roads all
+over the island makes it easy for the police to get about. When a
+criminal gets away from them he has to take to the hills and to keep
+there. It is such solitary fugitives who still give the stranger a
+notion that the country is essentially criminal. But he is a bandit, not
+a brigand. He may rob, but he does not kidnap. His idea of ransom is
+what is in a man's pockets, not what his Government will pay to prevent
+having his throat cut. After all, there is such a thing in England as
+highway robbery, and in Corsica robbery is usually without violence. If
+a bandit is treated as a gentleman he will be polite, even though he
+points a gun at a visitor's stomach and requests him to hand over all he
+happens to have about him.
+
+I went to Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of
+the island than I did. We landed at Bastia, where, by the way, Nelson
+also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the
+most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring,
+sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the
+most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for
+that matter, in the world. For the island is fertile and is yet barren;
+it is mountainous and has great stretches of plain in it along the
+eastern shore. Though it is but fifty miles across and little more than
+a hundred long, there is a real range of rugged high mountains in it,
+two of them, Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, being nearly 9000 feet high,
+while three others, Pagliorba, Padre and d'Oro are over 7000 feet. The
+rocks of these ranges are primary and metamorphic, and the scenery is
+bold. Yet it is kindly and gracious for the forests are thick. On the
+peaks, and in the recesses of the loftier forests, a wild black sheep,
+the mufflon, can still be hunted. And the tumbling streams and rivers
+are full of trout. There are few better trout streams in Europe than the
+Golo, which runs into the sea on the east coast through a big salt-water
+lagoon called Biguglia. When I saw it the stream was in fine order, and
+I longed to get out of the train to throw a fly upon it. For the island
+is now so civilised that a railway runs from Bastia across the summit of
+the island by the towns of Corte and Vivario down to Ajaccio. But when I
+and my friend were there the train only ran to Corte. We had to drive
+from there across the summit to Vivario, whither the rail had reached,
+in the western slope of the hills. Corte sits queen-like on the summit
+of the island, and is quiet and ancient. Yet some day it will be, like
+Orezza with its strong iron waters, a health resort. The French go more
+and more to Corsica, and the intruding English have what is practically
+an English hotel at Ajaccio. There is another in the forests of
+Vizzavona.
+
+It is a quick descent from the summit to Ajaccio, which lies smiling in
+its gulf, that is somewhat like one of the deep indentations of Puget
+Sound. We stayed there for a week and during that time took a
+_diligence_ and went up to Vico. It was on this little forty-mile
+journey among the hills that I saw most of Corsica's character. And at
+first it was curiously melancholy to me. As we drove inland we met
+numbers of the peasants, men and women, and at first it seemed as if a
+great epidemic must have devastated the country. Almost every woman we
+saw was in black. But this comes from a habit that they have of wearing
+black for three years after any of their relatives die. Even in a
+healthy country (and the lowlands, or the _plage_ of Corsica, is not
+healthy in summer) most families must lose a member in three years, and
+thus it happens that most of the women are in perpetual mourning. The
+solidarity of the family is great in Corsica. It must be or women would
+not renounce their natural and beautiful dress to adorn themselves with
+colours. It was curious to see at times some young girl not in mourning.
+I could not help thinking that she had an unfair advantage over her
+darkly-dressed fellows.
+
+We came at last to Vico in the hills, and found it picturesque to the
+last degree, and quite equally unsanitary. It was at once beautifully
+picturesque and foully offensive. Nothing less than a tropical
+thunderstorm could have cleansed it. But none of its inhabitants minded.
+They loafed about the deadly streams of filth and were quite unconscious
+of anything disagreeable in the air. A Spanish village is purity itself
+to such a place as Vico. But then the proud and haughty Corsicans object
+to doing any work except upon their own fields. If an ordinance had been
+passed to cleanse Vico's streets and that dreadful main drain, its
+stream from the hills, it would have been necessary to import Italians
+to do it. For all hard labour outside mere tillage is done by them. I
+would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at
+which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service.
+
+In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village
+higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here
+and there through _le maquis_, the scrub or bush of Corsica. And as we
+went we got a good view of many little mountain villages, which hang for
+the most part on the slope of the hills, being neither in the valley nor
+on the summit. We were high enough to be among the chestnuts; vineyards
+there were none. And at last we came to Renno, and found the villagers
+taking a sad holiday. I spoke to them in bad Italian, and found that it
+seemed good Corsican to them, perhaps even classical Corsican, if there
+be such a thing, and learnt that there had been a funeral of a little
+child that morning. They proposed to do no more work that day. Most of
+the men were loafing along a wall by their little inn, and they were
+soon reinforced by many women. In a few minutes the village had almost
+forgotten the funeral in the excitement of seeing two strangers,
+foreigners, Englishmen. They told us that so far as they remember no
+foreigner, not even a Frenchman, had been there before. Their village
+was indeed lost to the world; they looked on Vico, evil-smelling Vico,
+as a great, fine town: Ajaccio was a distant and immense city. But no
+one from Renno had been there. It was indeed possible that most of the
+inhabitants had never seen the sea. There was something touching in this
+quaint and simple isolation, and the men were simple too. I invited the
+whole male population of the place to drink with me at the poor little
+_cabaret_. The drink they took (it was the only drink save some sour
+wine) was white brandy at ten centimes the glass. To make friends in
+this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two
+francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small
+measure their curiosity about the world beyond _le maquis_, and beyond
+the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman,
+spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless
+in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing
+this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult
+point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of
+us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in
+Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke
+"Pondicherry?"
+
+Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other
+island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its
+native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and
+indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn
+off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to
+speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the
+vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and
+mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild
+black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law
+and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart. They
+are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians.
+And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics
+than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I
+know not with what accuracy, that most of the _mouchards_, or spies, and
+the _agents provocateurs_ of the French police, are Corsican by birth.
+But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the
+birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE MATTERHORN
+
+
+Owing to my having read very little Alpine literature, I have seen but
+few attempts to analyse the mental experiences of the novice who, for
+the first time, ascends any of the higher peaks. And having read nothing
+upon the subject I was naturally curious, while I was at Zermatt this
+last summer, as to what these experiences were. I may own frankly that
+the desire to find out had a great deal to do with my trying
+mountaineering. A writer, and especially a writer of fiction, has, I
+think, one plain duty always before him. He ought to know, and cannot
+refuse to learn, even at the cost of toil and trouble, all the ways of
+the human mind. And experience at second-hand can never be relied on.
+The average man is afraid of saying he was afraid. And the average
+climber is one who has long passed the interesting stage when he first
+faced the unknown. I was obviously a novice, and a green one, when I
+tried the Matterhorn. That I was such a novice is the only thing which
+makes me think my experience at all interesting from the psychological
+point of view. And to my mind that point of view is also the literary
+one.
+
+On looking back I certainly believe I was very much afraid of the
+mountains in general and of the Matterhorn in particular. It is
+difficult, however, to say where fear begins and mere natural
+nervousness leaves off. Fear, after all, is often the note of warning
+sounded by a man's organism in the face of the unknown. It is hardly
+strange it should be felt upon the mountains. But if I was afraid of the
+mountains (and I thought that I was) I was certainly curious. During my
+first week at Zermatt I had done a good second-class peak, but had been
+told that the difference between the first and second class was
+prodigious. This naturally excited curiosity. And I began to feel that
+my curiosity could only be satisfied by climbing the Matterhorn. For one
+thing that mountain has a great name; for another it looks inaccessible.
+And it had only been done once that year. If I did it I should be the
+first Englishman on the summit for the season. And the guides were
+doubtful whether it would "go."
+
+But, after all, was it not said by folks who climbed to the Schwartzsee
+that the mountain was really easy? Were not the slabs above the Shoulder
+roped? Did not processions go up it in the middle of the season? And yet
+it was now only the first of July and there was a good deal of new snow
+on the mountain. And why were the guides just a little doubtful? Perhaps
+they were doubtful of me; and yet Joseph Pollinger had taken me up three
+smaller peaks. I decided that I had hired him to do the thinking. But I
+could not make him do it all.
+
+The day I had spent upon the Wellenkuppe had been a time of imagination,
+and I had seen the beauty of things. But from the Matterhorn I can
+eliminate the element of beauty. I saw very little beauty in it or from
+it. I had other things to do than to think of the sublime. But I could
+think of the ridiculous, and at one o'clock in the morning, when we
+started from the hut with a lantern, I said the whole proceeding was
+folly. I was a fool to be there. And down below me, far below me,
+glimmered the crevassed slopes of the Furgg Glacier. I grew callous and
+absorbed, and I shrugged my shoulders as the dawn came up. I did not
+care to turn my eyes to look upon the red rose glory of the lighted Dom
+and Taschhorn. Let them glow!
+
+At the upper ice-filled hut we rested. The vastness of the mountain
+began to affect me. I saw by now that the Wellenkuppe was a little
+thing. The three thousand extra feet made all the difference. This was
+obviously beyond me, and I could never get to the summit. It was
+ridiculous of the Pollingers to think I could. I told them so quite
+crossly as we went on. Probably they had made a mistake; they would, no
+doubt, find it out on the Shoulder. It seemed rather hard that I should
+have to get there when it was so easy to turn back at once. But I said
+nothing more and climbed. My heart did its work well, and my head did
+not ache. This was a surprise to me, as I had looked for some sort of
+_malaise_ above twelve thousand feet. As it did not come I stared at the
+big world about me. I viewed it all with a kind of anger and alarmed
+surprise. Where was I being taken to? I began to see they were taking me
+out of the realm of the usual. I was rapidly ascending into the
+unknown, and I did not like it in the least. If we fell from the
+_arete_ we might not stop going for four thousand feet. Down below, a
+thin, blue line was a _bergschrund_ that was capable of swallowing an
+army corps. That patch of bluish patina was a tumbled mass of _seracs_.
+The sloping glacier looked flat.
+
+Then the guides said we were going slowly. I knew they meant that for
+me, of course, and I felt very angry with them. They consoled me by
+saying that we should soon be at the Shoulder, and that it would not
+take long to reach the summit. I did not believe them and I said I
+should never do it. But when we got to the Shoulder I was glad. I knew
+many turned back at that point. We sat down to rest. The guides talked
+their own German, not one word of which I could understand, so turned
+from them and looked at the vast upper wedge of the Matterhorn. It
+glowed red in the morning sun; it was red hot, vast, ponderous, and yet
+the lower mountain held it up as lightly as an ashen shaft holds up a
+bronze spear-head. It was so wonderfully shaped that it did not look
+big. But it did look diabolic. There was some infernal wizardry of
+cloud-making going on about that spear-head. The wind blew to us across
+the Zmutt Valley. Nevertheless, the wind above the Roof, as they call
+it, was blowing in every direction, and the live wisps of newborn cloud
+went in and out like the shuttles of a loom. I came to the conclusion
+that this was a particularly devilish, uncanny sort of show, and stared
+at it open-eyed. But I was comforted by the thought that the Pollingers
+were rapidly coming to the belief that this was not the sort of day to
+go any higher. I was quite angry when they declared we could do it
+easily. For I knew better, or my disturbed mind thought I did. This was
+the absolutely unknown to me, and their experience was nothing to my
+alarmed instincts. I was sure that my ancestors had lived on plains, and
+now I was dragging them into dangers that they knew nothing of.
+Nevertheless, I told the guides to go on. I spoke with a kind of eager
+interest and desperation. For, indeed, it was most appallingly
+interesting. We came to the slabs where the ropes made the Matterhorn so
+easy, as I had been told. I wished that some of those who believed this
+were with me.
+
+But with the fixed ropes to lay hold of I climbed fast. I relinquished
+such holds upon solidity with reluctance. That yonder was the top, said
+my men, but for fully half a minute I declined to go any further. For it
+was quite obvious to me that I should never get down again. But again I
+shrugged my shoulders and went on. I might just as well do the whole
+thing. And sensation followed sensation. My mind was like a slow plate
+taking one photograph on top of the other. It was like wax, something
+new stamped out the last minute's impression. I heard my guides telling
+me that we must get to the summit because the people in Zermatt would be
+looking through telescopes. I did not care how many people looked
+through telescopes. So far as I was concerned the moon-men might be
+doing the same. I was one of three balancing fools on a rope.
+
+And then we came to the heavy snow on the little five-fold curving
+_arete_ that is the summit. Within a stone's throw of the top I declared
+again that I was quite high enough to satisfy me, but with a little more
+persuasion I went across the last three-foot ridge of snow, reached the
+top and sat down.
+
+The folks at Zermatt were staring, no doubt, but I had nothing to do
+with them. Let them look if they wished to. For it was impossible to
+get to the top, and I was there. It was far more impossible to get down,
+and we were going to try. That was interesting. I had never been so
+interested before. For though I hoped we should succeed I did not think
+it likely. So I took in what I could, while I could, and stared at the
+visible anatomy of the Mischabel and the patina-stained floor of the
+white world with intense, yet aloof, interest. After a mere five
+minutes' rest we started on our ridiculous errand. But though I was as
+sure in my mind that we should not get down as I had been that we should
+not get up, there was an instant reversal of feeling. My instincts had
+been trying to prevent my ascending; they were eagerly bent on
+descending. I did not mind going down each difficult place, for I was
+going back into the known. Every step took me nearer the usual. I was
+going home to humanity. These mountains were cold company; they were
+indifferent. I was close up against cold original causes, which did not
+come to me mitigated and warmed by human contact or the breath of a
+city. I had had enough of them.
+
+There are gaps in my memory; strange lacunae. I remember the Roof, the
+slabs, the big snow patch above the Shoulder. Much that comes between I
+know nothing of. But the snow-patch is burnt into my mind, for though it
+was but a hundred _metres_ across it took us half-an-hour's slow care to
+get down it. Without the stakes set in it and the reserve rope it would
+have been almost impossible. It only gradually dawned on me that this
+care was needed to prevent the whole snow-field from coming away with
+us. I breathed again on rock. But the little _couloirs_ that we had
+crossed coming up were now dangerous. I threw a handful of snow into
+several, and the snow that lay there quietly whispered, moved, rustled,
+hissed like snakes, and went away. But I could hardly realise that there
+was danger here or there. There was, of course, danger to come, yonder,
+round the corner of some rock. But the guides were very careful and a
+little anxious. It dawned on me, as I watched them with a set mind, that
+this was rather a bad day for the Matterhorn.
+
+The distances now seemed appalling. After hours of work I looked round
+and saw the wedge stand up just over me. It made me irritable. When, in
+the name of Heaven, were we coming to the upper hut? When we did at
+last get there I began to feel that by happy chance we might really
+reach Zermatt again after all.
+
+Once more I had vowed a thousand times that I would never climb again.
+But I know I shall, though I hardly know why. It is not that the fatigue
+is so good for the body that can endure it. Nor is it the mere sight of
+the wonders of Nature. The very thing that is terrifying is the
+attraction, for the unknown calls us always.
+
+But if there is a great pleasure, and a terrible pleasure, in coming
+into (and out of) the unknown, it is intensified by the fact that one is
+learning what is in one's self. It is a curious fact that writers seem
+to have done a great deal of climbing. Many of the first explorers among
+the higher Alps may not unjustly be classed among men of letters, and
+some of them, no doubt, went on a double errand. They learnt something
+of the unknown in two ways.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS
+
+
+All Zurich turned out to see the procession that was a mile long and
+overlapped, and went past double, going opposite ways, and the skies
+were blue as amethyst, and the lake was like the heavens, while
+underfoot the white dust lay thick until the growing, hurrying crowd
+sent it flying. All trades, with banners and bands and emblems, were
+represented; there were iron workers, tin workers, gardeners, women and
+children. One beautiful young girl in a cap of liberty waved a red
+banner to Freedom among the applause of thousands. For there were eight
+thousand in the procession, and the spectators were the half of this
+busy Canton making Sunday holiday. At the end of the procession we
+rested in the Cantonal Schulplatz, and Grealig spoke, and then Volders,
+the violent, strong-voiced Belgian, who called for _la lutte_, and
+looked most capable of fighting. He is now dead.
+
+And on the morrow, at the opening of the many-tongued Congress, the
+fighting and confusion began and lasted a long, long time. For after
+some usual business and congratulations the usual fight about the
+Anarchists commenced. It all turned on the invitation, which was worded
+in a broad way, so broad as to catch the English Trades Unions, who fear
+Socialism as they do the devil, and thus let in Anarchists claiming to
+represent trades become corporate by union.
+
+The long hall, decorated by Saint Marx and many flags, quickly filled
+with an incongruous mass of four hundred delegates, and the gallery were
+soon yelling. Bebel, who kept in the background and pulled the strings,
+proposed a limiting amendment about "political action" which the
+Anarchists maintained includes revolutionary force. This was the signal
+for the fight. Landauer, a German, young, long, thin and enthusiastic,
+made a fine speech in defence of the Anarchists. Then Mowbray of the
+English backed him up. I was then in the gallery and saw the mass surge
+here and there. Adler of the Austrians strove for peace with
+outstretched arms among the crowd, dividing angry and bitter men. But
+he was overborne and blows were struck. The Anarchists were expelled.
+Only one man was seriously hurt, but those thrown out were bitter at
+their expulsion, and on the morrow the row began again.
+
+On the platform were the president and vice-president, and the
+interpreters and others. These interpreters are mostly violent partisans
+and don't conceal it. A speech they like they deliver with real energy,
+rasping in the points. They are not above private interpretations; they
+were as liberal as Sir Thomas Urquhart when he translated Rabelais not
+in the interests of decency. When they hated a speaker they mangled and
+compressed him. There was a great uproar when Gillies, a German, but one
+of the English deputation, insisted on translating his first speech into
+German. The interpreters and others vowed he would make another and
+different one, but he stuck to his point and raised the very devil among
+the Germans of the Parliamentary Socialist party who wanted to dispute
+the Anarchist delegates' credentials and have them definitely "chucked."
+They howled and roared and shook their fists, and the French president
+shrieked for order. But at times his bell was a faint tinkle, like a
+far sheep-bell on distant hills. He shouted unheard and looked in vain
+for a break. For the Germans were accused of meanness; it was simply a
+desire to keep out the younger, more open, most alive of the workers,
+those who admired not their methods and looked on them as they did on
+Eugene Richter.
+
+Then at last the English delegation, who as a body were in favour of
+turning the Anarchists out, rose and yelled for the closure, vowing they
+would leave until real business was reached if some decision wasn't come
+to; and that had some effect. The yells of "_Cloture, cloture!_"
+dominated all else, and it was finally voted among frantic disorder, the
+French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For
+on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning,
+for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians,
+and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans. So one delegate
+may equal a hundred; Servia and Bulgaria may outvote France; a solitary
+Russian hold ninety-two Germans in check.
+
+Before this they turned out a Polish girl with unsigned credentials. She
+made a good speech and was gallantly supported, but in the end failed.
+And when all the putting out was done there was an appeal for
+unanimity. No one laughed, however, and then Bebel came from behind with
+a proposal that seeing so much time had been wasted the articles of the
+agenda should be submitted to the various committees first. So this
+morning is a morning off and there is peace at anyrate among the mass of
+the delegates.
+
+In all this it is excessively easy to be unjust, to misjudge and to go
+wrong. The man who is ready with _a priori_ opinions about all forms and
+means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he
+be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent
+nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent
+an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their
+mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole"
+they stand in the benches and protest again in acute screams. It is
+under extraordinary difficulties that the movement is being carried
+forward. Marx, when he started this internationalism, can hardly have
+recognised the supreme difficulties that the differing tongues alone
+offer to united action. In many a large assembly there is frequent
+misconception, but here are three main languages, and many of the
+delegates understand neither English, German nor French.
+
+And under the broad top currents of jealousy are the secret unmeasured
+tendencies of enmity or rivalry of ancient jealousy. To explain one
+man's vote we must remember that So-and-so threw a glass of absinthe in
+his face ten years ago in a Paris restaurant; that another was kicked in
+Soho; that another got work over the head of a friend.
+
+So the thing goes on, but whether their outlook be wide or narrow,
+personal or impersonal, they work in their way and something is really
+done.
+
+But for deadly earnestness commend me to the party with the unfortunate
+name of Anarchists. The party headed by Landauer and Werner issued
+invitations in the Tonhalle to the delegates and others, to come to the
+Kasino Aussersehl, where they would protest against the non-reception of
+their mandates. I went there with an English delegate. We entered a long
+hall with a stage and scenery at the end. All the tables were full of a
+very quiet crowd drinking most harmless red wine. I sat near Landauer.
+He is a very nervous, keen, eager young fellow, with the thin,
+well-marked eyebrows in a curve which perhaps show the revolutionary or
+at the least the man in revolt. But his general aspect and that of his
+immediate friends and colleagues is extremely gentle and mild; this no
+one can help marking.
+
+The proceedings began with a long speech by Werner and were continued by
+a Dutch journalist, who took the contrary side but was listened to with
+exemplary patience. He was controverted by Domela Niewenhuis, the leader
+of the Dutch, who looks a mediaeval saint but speaks with great vigour
+and some humour.
+
+The most noticeable feature of this revolutionary meeting was its
+extreme peace and the great firmness with which every attempt at noise
+or interruption was put down. The only really violent speech made during
+the evening was by a fair Italian, who called the German Parliamentary
+Socialist "Borghesi" and recommended their immediate extinction by all
+means within the power of those who objected to their methods. Landauer,
+their revolutionary leader, spoke after him, and though greatly excited
+was not particularly violent. I talked with him the morning after and
+endeavoured to explain to him why the English workers were more
+conservative and more ready to trust to constitutional methods of
+enforcing their views. For it is the triple combination of long hours,
+low wages and militarism that makes the German violent and impatient of
+the slow order of change recommended by the Parliamentarians, who, so
+far, have done nothing.
+
+
+
+
+AT LAS PALMAS
+
+
+On a map the Canary Islands look like seven irregular fish scales, and
+of these Grand Canary is a cycloid scale. For it is round and has deep
+folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle.
+Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder
+heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem
+to run to the centre. With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one
+could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first
+blush it seems when one lands at Las Palmas that one has come to the
+cinder and sand dumping ground of all the world, an enlarged edition of
+Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail.
+There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by
+daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery
+satellite of Grand Canary joined to the main island by an isthmus of
+yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust; dust flies in a ceaseless wind;
+unhappy palms by the roads are grey with dust; it would at first seem
+impossible to eat anything but an egg without getting one's teeth full
+of grit. And yet after all one sees that there are compensations in the
+sun. I said to a man who managed a big hotel, "This is a hideous place;"
+and he answered cheerfully, "Yes, isn't it?" And he added, "We have only
+got the climate." So might a man say, "I've not much ready money, but
+I've a million or two in Consols." I understood it by-and-by. And after
+all Las Palmas is not all the island, nor is its evil-mannered port. The
+country is a country of vines behind the sand and cinder ramparts of the
+city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the
+hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they
+bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet
+above the sea. They grow vines and sugar and cultivate the cochineal
+insect, which looks like a loathsome disease (as indeed it is) upon the
+swarth cactus or tunera which it feeds on. And the islands grow tobacco.
+Las Palmas is after all only the emporium of Grand Canary and a coaling
+station for steamers to South Africa and the West Coast and South
+America. It also takes invalids and turns out good work even among
+consumptives, for there is power in its sun and dry air.
+
+Its people are Spanish, but Spanish with a difference. The ancient
+Guanches, now utterly extinct as a people, have left traces of their
+blood and influence and character. Even now the poor Canary folk
+naturally live in caves. They dig a hole in a rock, or enlarge a hollow,
+and hang a sack before the hole, and, behold, they possess a house. Not
+fifty yards from the big old fort at the back of the town the cliffs are
+all full of people as a sandstone quarry is sometimes full of sand
+martins. The caves with doors pay taxes, it is said, but those with no
+more than a sack escape anything in the shape of a direct tax. To escape
+taxes altogether in any country under Spain is impossible. The _octroi_
+or _fielato_ sees to that.
+
+For the most part Las Palmas to English people is no more than a
+sanatorium. They come to the Islands to get well and go away knowing as
+much of the people as they knew before. And indeed the climate is one
+that makes sitting in a big cane chair much easier than walking even a
+hundred yards. But the English for that matter do not trouble greatly
+about the customs or conditions of any foreigners. They _are_
+foreigners, Spaniards, strangers. It is easy to sit in the garden of a
+big hotel surrounded by one's own compatriots and ignore the fact that
+the Canary Islands do not belong to us. That they do not is perhaps a
+grievance of a sort. One is pleased to remember that Nelson made a bold
+attempt to take the city of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, even though he was
+wounded and failed. For no more surprising piece of audacity ever
+entered an English head. There was no more disgrace in his failing than
+there would be in failing to take the moon. And after all, some day, no
+doubt, the English will buy or steal a Canary Island. There is a
+lingering suspicion among us all that no island ought to belong to any
+other nation, unless indeed it is the United States. With an
+enterprising people these cinder heaps would be less heavily taxed and
+more prosperous. For the prosperity of Las Palmas itself is much a
+matter of coaling. And the islands have had commercial crisis after
+commercial crisis as wine rose in price and fell, as cochineal had its
+vain struggle with chemical dyes. Now its chief hold is the banana.
+
+My first walk at Las Palmas was through the port to the Isleta. I went
+with a Scotchman who talked Spanish like a native and astounded two
+small boys who volunteered to guide us where no guide was needed. The
+begging, as in all Spanish places, is a pest, a nuisance, a very
+desolation. "Give a penny, give a penny," varied by a tremendous rise to
+"Give a shilling," is the cry of all the children. Among Spaniards it is
+no disgrace to beg. While in the cathedral one day two of us were
+surrounded by a gang of acolytes in their church dress who begged
+ceaselessly, unreproved by any priest. These two boys on the Isleta
+having met someone who spoke Spanish left us to our own devices after
+having received a penny. And we went on until we were stayed by
+sentries. For the Isleta is now a powerful fort. It was made so at the
+time of the Spanish-American War, and no strangers are allowed to see
+it. So we turned aside and walked miles by a barbed wire fence, among
+fired rocks and cinders, where never a blade of grass grew. The Isleta
+is the latest volcano in Grand Canary, and except in certain states of
+the atmosphere it is utterly and barrenly hideous. Only when one sees it
+from afar, when the sun is setting and the white sea is aflame, does it
+become beautiful. Certainly Las Palmas is not lovely.
+
+And yet there is one beauty at Las Palmas, a beauty that none of the
+natives can appreciate and few of the visitors ever see. It is a kind of
+beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful.
+There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a
+sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so
+keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the
+reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with
+sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes
+in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand,
+it owes its prosperity to it as well. Yet folks curse its great folded
+dunes, which by blocking the channel between the main island and the
+Isleta have created the sheltered Puerto de la Luz, where all its
+shipping lies in security from the great seas breaking in Confital Bay.
+These dunes rise two hundred feet at least, and for ever creep and shift
+and move in the draught of keen air blowing north and north-west. In the
+sunlight (and it is on them the sunlight seems most to fall) they shine
+sleekly and appear to have a certain pleasant and silky texture from
+afar. But as we walk towards them the light gets stronger, almost
+intolerably strong, and when one is among them they deceive the eye so
+that distances seem doubled. And they lie and move in the wind. Day
+after day I watched them, and walked upon them, and on no two days were
+they alike; their contours changed perpetually, changed beneath one's
+eyes like yellow drifting snow. They advanced in walls, and the leeward
+scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the
+sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the
+surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of
+the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in
+faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for
+clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk.
+Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from
+its bottom nothing was visible but the skyline and the sky. Again we saw
+over the blazing yellow ridge sudden white roofs of the Puerto and the
+masts of ships, and then a streak of blue more intense than ever because
+of the red yellow of the sand. And all the time the dunes moved, lived
+and marched south-east, while the sands rose up out of the sea of the
+windy bay and marched overland. The sand itself was very dry, very fine,
+so fine indeed that when it trickled through the fingers it felt like
+fine warm silk. No particle adhered to another. As I raked it through my
+fingers the sand ran in strange, enticing curves, each pouring stream
+finely lined, as if it was woven of curious fibres, making a wonderful
+design of interlacing columns. And deep beneath the surface it held the
+heat of yesterday.
+
+To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand
+pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet
+had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast;
+there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was
+alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an
+infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand
+came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again.
+The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life.
+Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a
+solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat
+in the folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to
+the world.
+
+And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was
+ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the
+curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were
+wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand
+spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a
+thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its
+own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand
+and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the
+left the hills above Banyodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy
+with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at
+their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the
+Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards
+Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam
+like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one's feet often lie Portuguese
+men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue,
+and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are.
+One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them
+carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching
+finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my
+tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of
+young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty,
+nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne
+with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may
+survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's
+dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may
+indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of
+desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay
+there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific
+overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty
+and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las
+Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.
+
+
+
+
+THE TERRACINA ROAD
+
+
+Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by
+express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of
+the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the
+Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses
+the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of
+Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the
+past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs
+from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and
+Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the
+strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long
+Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they
+warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens.
+And To-day marches two and two in the stalwart figures of twin
+_carabinieri_ upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some
+danger from brigands. These _carabinieri_ (there are never less than two
+together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law
+is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax
+salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient
+Appian Way, made by Appius Claudius three centuries before the Christian
+era, there are many poor, and poor of a sullen mind, differing much from
+the laughter-loving _lazzaroni_ of Naples. I saw many of them: they
+belonged still to a conquered Samnium. Or so it seemed to me.
+
+The train now runs from Rome to Velletri, and on to Terracina. The
+Sabine and Alban Mountains are upon the left soon after leaving the
+city. Further south are the Volscian Hills. Velletri is an old city of
+the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and
+the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all
+seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is
+visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the
+enchantress. One might imagine that her influence has not departed with
+her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes
+of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount
+Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands in the bay of Naples.
+Below, to the south-east, lies Terracina; on its high rock the arched
+ruins of the palace of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who conquered
+Odoacer and won Italy, ruling it with justice after he had slain Odoacer
+at Ravenna with his own hand.
+
+I got to Terracina late at night one January, and though I own that
+things past touch me with no such sense of sympathy as things yet to be,
+my heart beat a little faster as I drove in the darkness through this
+ancient Anxur, once a stronghold of the Volscians. Here too I left the
+railway and the southern road was before me. Terracina was touched with
+literary memories; Washington Irving had written about that very same
+old inn at Terracina to which I was going, that inn which poor deceived
+Baedeker called Grand Hotel Royal in small capitals. I was among the
+Volscians, in the Appian Way, in the country of brigands, with the
+spirit of Irving. And suddenly I drove across rough paving stones in the
+heavy shadows of vast corridors, and was greeted by a feeble and
+broken-down old landlord, who wished the noblest signor of them all, my
+undistinguished self, all good things. Poor Francia was the very spirit
+of a deserted landlord. I imagined that he might have remembered
+prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise
+robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His
+vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by
+candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and
+speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the
+best apartment in his house. We climbed stone staircases as one might
+climb the Pyramids, wandered on through resounding and ghostly
+corridors, and finally came to a room as vast as a quarry and almost as
+chilly as a catacomb. When he placed the candle on a cold slab of a
+table and withdrew with many bows I could have imagined myself a lost
+spirit. There was just sufficient light to see the darkness. The room
+was a kind of tragedy in itself; the floor was stone; a little bed in
+one far distant corner was only to be discovered by travel. It was a
+long walk to the window. Outside I saw white foam breaking in the
+harbour now silted up and wholly useless.
+
+I dined that night in another hall which could have accommodated a
+hundred. I was lost in shadows. But then I was a shadow among shades.
+This was the past indeed, an ancient world. And after dinner, at last, I
+got a bath. It took me two hours to get it, and when it came it was
+nothing more than a great kettle for boiling fish in. I knew it was that
+by the smell. I rejected it for a basin which was almost as large as an
+English saucer for a breakfast cup. And then I slept. I felt that I was
+in a tomb, sleeping with my fathers. It was a kind of unexpected
+resurrection to wake and find daylight about me.
+
+I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took
+a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and
+the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids.
+Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at
+all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me
+to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my
+prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to
+Formia, where I should be once more in touch with the rail. I
+instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I
+knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian
+experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with
+the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an
+awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went
+out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and
+hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are
+making a bargain or _combinazione_. The old landlord brisked up
+wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded
+him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that
+he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large
+commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a
+traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood
+some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble
+gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The
+landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of
+which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed. He suggested
+fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For
+an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to
+go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More
+than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They
+struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers.
+It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And
+finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then
+leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire
+and to give a _pourboire_. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old
+landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of
+pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his
+modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the
+Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.
+
+The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses--decent at anyrate
+for Italy--and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the
+railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange
+dream, such as might well come to one on a spot where ancient Rome, the
+age of the Goth, and mediaeval Italy and modern times mingled. By the
+road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the
+ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the
+road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun
+shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine
+blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.
+
+Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded
+over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy,
+a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of
+brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great
+street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted
+not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to
+ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of
+the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the
+property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was
+attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object
+was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He
+failed but played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the
+town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.
+
+We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was
+glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses
+climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is
+cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept
+down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a
+flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them.
+It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediaeval
+fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into
+substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and
+pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was
+brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French
+Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the
+Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano
+to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and
+Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his head. Finally he
+was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the
+wildest legends of his career.
+
+And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a
+wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his
+own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign
+languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember
+nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that
+I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the _dazio
+consume_, the _octroi_ post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's
+lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out
+before me.
+
+That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet
+sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as
+chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I
+wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a
+fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night,
+chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful
+little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills;
+on the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates;
+there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the
+Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the
+terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can
+see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola
+facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged
+to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little
+baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel
+dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck
+followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight
+or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would
+inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was
+surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor,
+so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who
+could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They
+were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the
+stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and
+to their disappointment, yet to their immense delight, for the Italian
+admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into
+laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with
+laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his
+lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly,
+"Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the
+hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of
+mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for
+once.
+
+
+
+
+A SNOW-GRIND
+
+
+Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has
+been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing
+is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as
+something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most
+mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been
+written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even
+surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier
+than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration
+has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as
+inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine
+author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for
+the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say
+that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it
+is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the
+snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes
+intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is
+perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be
+got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were
+wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would
+take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There
+are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the
+upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are
+deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he
+hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.
+
+And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I
+do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is
+not in man to endure such. He _will_ do everything that can be done by
+endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction
+that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb
+and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling
+that comes to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how
+far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always
+doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts
+Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself
+are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He
+only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might
+call impossible.
+
+But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to
+preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more
+than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do
+but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the
+plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will
+take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with
+them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.
+
+The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas
+Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as
+mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly
+be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as
+fast as any but the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an
+excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I
+was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not
+one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try
+one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay
+and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange
+that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a
+condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and
+wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was
+anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the
+edge of a precipice about matters of mountain aesthetics.
+
+We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which
+is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for
+Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close
+pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would
+be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after
+all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us
+say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a
+mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For
+early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the
+most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which
+does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly
+grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of
+them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are
+many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning
+after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But,
+nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one
+stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single
+candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I
+swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me
+that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than
+Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my
+own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a
+human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After
+drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage
+and found O---- sitting on the stairs putting his boots on. He too was
+silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off
+camp before dawn. When O---- had finished his breakfast we found the
+guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two
+o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough
+but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we
+got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view
+of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and
+equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the
+most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own
+folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.
+
+It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose
+opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted
+by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn
+had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides
+said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that
+two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their
+lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the
+great ice river of the Gorner Glacier we saw other and nearer and
+brighter lanterns going from the Betemps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One
+party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew
+that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the
+vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We
+seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies
+crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon
+the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was
+beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all
+of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the
+Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call
+beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the
+Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty
+red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the
+scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and
+non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality
+to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems
+alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite
+alone. The human water lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea
+was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at
+night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of
+avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun
+is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents.
+And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is
+cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is
+swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another
+world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.
+
+Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track
+branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice,
+and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base
+of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides
+are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The
+two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by
+all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as
+strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and
+ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down
+by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged
+guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in
+knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di
+Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like.
+For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with
+putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I
+fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was
+not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task,
+the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers
+have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.
+
+Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses
+not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long
+snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore
+and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the
+mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters
+not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little
+real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it; the
+feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of
+anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be
+read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have
+their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the
+snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and
+peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our
+left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the
+real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the
+Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its
+name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be
+like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which
+was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte
+Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the
+ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux.
+And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was
+beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the
+vast plains of _neve_ with their glare and their infinite infernal
+monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles the shining white
+world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for
+human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very
+far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is
+little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as
+we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to
+rest, and I fought with my friend O---- about the beauty of the
+mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real
+loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting
+that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a
+thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.
+
+And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the
+snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the
+steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga.
+We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to
+the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I
+own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my
+soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat
+agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.
+
+And yet below us was the other side of our pass, which certainly looked
+more interesting. Right under our feet was a little snow _arete_ with
+slopes like a high pitched roof. It was quite possible to be killed
+there if one was foolish or reckless, and the prospect cheered me up. It
+is at anyrate not dull to be on an _arete_ with a snow slope leading to
+nothing beneath me. And I cannot help insisting on the fact that much
+mountaineering is essentially dull. Often enough a long day may be
+without more than one dramatic moment. There is really only five minutes
+of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the
+_arete_, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to
+the left and came to the _bergschrund_, the big crevasse which separates
+the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious
+that the guides should find the _schrund_ difficult. I had been bored to
+death and yearned for some little excitement. I even declared sulkily
+(it is odd, but true, that one does often become reckless and sulky
+under such circumstances) that I was ready to jump "any beastly
+_bergschrund_." My offer was no doubt made with the comfortable
+consciousness that the guides were not likely to let me do anything
+quite idiotic. But there was no necessity for any such gymnastics. The
+_schrund's_ lower lip was only six feet lower than the upper lip, and
+the whole crevasse was barely three feet across, though doubtless deep
+enough to swallow a thousand parties like ours. Somewhat to my
+disappointment we got over quite easily, and struck down across the
+glacier, passing one or two rather dangerous crevasses by crawling on
+our stomachs. The only satisfaction I had was that both the guides and
+O---- declared that the way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas
+it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told
+them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an
+accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in
+the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood
+on the steep _debris_ slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the
+zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake,
+and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had
+lunch, and I and O---- once more fought over the glacier of the upper
+snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on aesthetic or
+gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-Fee
+till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I
+get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel
+in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I
+declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the
+Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or
+to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does
+not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of
+labour.
+
+
+
+
+ACROSS THE BIDASSOA
+
+
+I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and
+the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east
+wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I
+discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick
+mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English
+Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped
+for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them,
+though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great
+city of sad inhabitants.
+
+The desolation of the Landes is an ordered, a commercial desolation.
+Once the whole surface of the district bore nothing but a scanty
+herbage. The soil is sand and an iron cement, or "hard-pan," below the
+sand. Here uncounted millions of slender sea-pines cover the plain; they
+stand in serried rows, as regular as a hop-garden, gloomy and without
+the sweet wildness of nature. And every pine is bitterly scarred, so
+that it may bleed its gum for traders. When the plantations are near
+their full growth they are cut down, stacked to season slowly, and the
+trees finish their existence as mine timbers deep under the earth.
+
+After seventy miles of a southward run there are signs that the Landes
+are not so everlasting and spacious as they seem. To the south-east, at
+Buglose, where St Vincent de Paul was born, the Pyrenees show far and
+faint and blue on the horizon. And then suddenly the River Adour
+appears, and a country which was English. Dax was ours for centuries,
+and so was Bayonne, whose modern citadel has had a rare fate for any
+place of strength. It has never been taken; not even Wellington and his
+Peninsular veterans set foot within its bastions.
+
+This is the country of the Basques, that strange, persistent race of
+which nothing is known. Their history is more covered by ancient clouds
+than that of the Celts; their tongue has no cousin in the world, though
+in structure it is like that of the North-American Indians. I met some
+of them later, but so far know no more than two words of their
+language.
+
+The wind was cool at St Jean de Luz, but the sun was bright and the sea
+thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and
+south are the Pyrenees--lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in
+outline. The dominant peak, being the first of the chain, is Larhune (a
+Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel
+held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and
+across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel,
+beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of
+Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of
+the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the
+dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the
+land. To the northward, but out of sight, lies windy Biarritz; to the
+south is blood-stained, battered and renewed San Sebastian, a name that
+recalls many deeds of heroism and many of shame. The horrors of its
+siege and taking might make one cold even in sunlight. But between us
+and its new city lies the Bidassoa. Here, at St Jean de Luz, is the
+Nivelle flowing past Ciboure. The river was once familiar to us in
+despatches. The whole country even yet smells of ancient war. For here
+lies the great western road to Spain. And more than once it has been the
+road to Paris. It is a path of rising and falling empire.
+
+During my few days at St Jean de Luz I had foregathered with some exiled
+friends, walked to quiet Ascain, and regretted I lacked the time even to
+attain the summit of so small a mountain as Larhune, and then, desiring
+for once to set foot in Spain, took train to Hendaye. This is the last
+town in France. Across the Bidassoa rose the quaint roofs and towers of
+old Fuentarabia, the Fontarabie of the French. I hired an eager Basque
+to row me across the river, then running seaward at the last of the ebb.
+
+The day was splendid and mild. There was no cloud in the sky, not a
+wreath of mist upon the mountains. The river was a blue that verged on
+green; its broad sand glowed golden in the sun; to seaward the
+amethystine waters of the Atlantic heaved and glittered. On the far
+cliffs they burst in lifting spray. The hills wore the fine faint blue
+of atmosphere; the wind was very quiet. This seemed at last like peace.
+I let my hands feel the cool waters of the river and soaked my soul in
+the waters of peace.
+
+And yet my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me
+with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he
+had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish
+and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how
+to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists in
+buying interested civility as well as help or transport with an extra
+fifty centimes is indeed but a wise and calculated waste. It occurred to
+me that he might solve a question that puzzled me. Were the Basques
+united as a race, or were their sympathies French or Spanish? After
+considering how I should put it, I said,--
+
+"Mon ami, est-ce que vous etes plus Basque que Francais, ou plus
+Francais que Basque?"
+
+He taught me a lesson in simple psychology, for he stopped poling and
+stared at me for a long minute. Then he scratched his head and a light
+came into his eyes.
+
+"Mais, monsieur, je suis un Basque Francais!"
+
+My fine distinction was beyond him, and it took me not a little
+indirect questioning to discover that he was certainly more French than
+Basque. He presently denounced the Spanish Basques in good round terms,
+and incidentally showed me that there must be a very considerable
+difference in their respective dialects. For he complained that the
+Spanish Basques spoke so fast that it was hard to understand them.
+
+He put me ashore at last on a mud flat and accompanied me to the Fonda
+Miramar, where a bright and pretty waitress hurried, after the fashion
+of Spaniards, to such an extent that she got me a simple lunch in no
+more than half an hour. My Spanish is far worse even than my French, but
+in spite of that we carried on an animated conversation in French and
+English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and
+Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I
+thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the
+deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque
+myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had
+never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was
+a sore point with me. I assured her of the shameful fact that the
+English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had
+some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England.
+As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to
+the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great
+excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now
+well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the news I
+had brought, I went out with my boatman to view the old town. I found it
+quaint and individual and lovely.
+
+A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and
+essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the
+upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the
+Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in
+England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the
+Bidassoa. I stood upon the roof of the old ruined palace of Charles Le
+Quint, and on every point of the compass the view had most peculiar and
+wonderful qualities. Beneath me was the increasing flood of the frontier
+river: at my very feet lay the narrow and picturesque street canyons of
+the ancient town; to the south was Irun in the shelter and shadow of the
+mountains; east-south-east rose the pyramidal summit of Larhune; the
+west was the sharp ridge of the brown Jaisquivel which hid San
+Sebastian; to the north was the rolling Bay; and right to the south the
+triple crown of Las Tres Coronas cut the sky sharply. Right opposite me
+Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I
+can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of
+mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot
+in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen.
+
+But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia. Peace lay over its
+dark homes and within its ancient walls.
+
+
+
+
+ON A VOLCANIC PEAK
+
+
+I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any
+volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de
+Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches
+of the Canary Islands.
+
+The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt,
+and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes
+of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge
+of the crater was of white fired rock; inside the cup the hollow was
+sulphur yellow. Puffs of smoke came from cracks. I dropped out of the
+wind and warmed myself at the fire. I picked up warm stones and danced
+them from one hand to another. And overhead a wind of ice howled. For
+the Peak is twelve thousand feet and more above the sea. An hour before
+I had been cutting steps in the last slopes of the last ash cone of the
+volcano which still lives and may burst into activity at any fatal
+moment.
+
+To stand upon the Peak and look down upon the world and the sea gives
+one a great notion of the making of things. Once the world was a
+crucible. The islands are all volcanic, all ash and cinders, lava and
+pumice. But I perceived that the Peak itself, the final peak, the last
+five thousand feet of it, was but the last result of a dying fire--a
+mere gas spurt to what had been. The whole anatomy of the island is laid
+bare; the history and the growth of the peak are written in letters of
+lava, in wastes of pumice and fire-scarred walls. The plain of the
+Canyadas lies beneath me, and is ten miles across. This was the ancient
+crater; it is as big as the crater of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands.
+But Kilauea is yet truly alive, a sea of lava with many cones spouting
+lava. Such was the crater of Teneriffe before the last peak rose within
+its basin. Now retama, a hardy bitter shrub, grows in these plains of
+pumice; the flats of it are pumice and rapilli, white and brown. But the
+ancient crater walls stand unbroken for miles, though here and there
+they have been swept away, some say by floods of water belched from the
+pit.
+
+From the last ash-peak of fire, as I stood on the crater walls in smoke
+and a cold wind, I saw no sign of Teneriffe's fertility. The works of
+man upon the lower slopes below the pinyon forests were invisible. The
+slopes by Orotava lay under cloud, the sea was hidden almost to its
+horizon by a vast plain of heaving mist. All I could see plainly was the
+old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls
+and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But
+though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay
+behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping,
+suffocating fish in drying mud. Its crater opened like a mouth and
+around it lesser holes gaped. On the plain of the old crater there rise
+two separate volcanoes--one, the true peak, rising 5000 feet from the
+Canyada floor (itself 7000 feet above the sea), and Chahorra, nearly
+4000. But so vast is the ancient crater that these two peaks, one yet
+alive and the other dead, seem but blisters or boils upon its barren
+plain. To the north, miles from the edge of my peak, I could see the
+crater cliff rise red. To the west and east the wall has broken down,
+but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet, scarred into
+chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the
+east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one
+follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies
+under these cliffs, looking like a beach. Once perhaps the crater was
+level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken
+down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood.
+
+None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were
+truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a
+last great eruption. Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for
+thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde.
+At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times,
+the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava
+into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it
+stands is the work of two periods of activity at least. The first great
+slope ends at another flat called the Rambleta. Here was once an ancient
+crater. Then the fires quietened, and there was a time of lesser
+activity. It woke again, and threw up the last weary ash-cone of a
+thousand feet or near it.
+
+All things die, but who shall say when a volcano has done its worst? A
+quiet Vesuvius slew its thousands: Etna its tens of thousands. Some day
+perhaps Teneriffe will wake again, either in earthquakes or lava-flow,
+and cause a Casamicciola or a Catania. The cones over against Garachico
+seemed much alive to me, and had I not warmed frozen hands at the very
+earth fires themselves? I broke out hot sulphur with the pick of my
+ice-axe. Icod of the Vines, or Orotava itself, port and villa, might
+some day wake to such a day as that which has smitten St Pierre in fiery
+Martinique.
+
+Once all the quiet seas were unbroken by their seven islands--Hierro,
+Palma, Gomera, Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote lay
+beneath the waters of the smiling ocean. Even now they smell of fire and
+the furnace; in the most fruitful vineyards of Grand Canary the soil is
+half cinders. In all the islands vast cinder heaps rise black and
+forbidding. Lava streams, in which the poisonous euphorbia alone can
+grow, thrust themselves like great dykes among fertile lands. The very
+sands of the sea are powdered pumice and black volcanic dust. One of the
+greatest craters of the world holds within itself great parts of wooded
+Palma. On dead volcanoes are the petty batteries of Spain over against
+Las Palmas. There is something strange and almost pathetic in the
+thought of guns raised where Nature once thundered dreadfully in the
+barren sunlit Isleta.
+
+But of all the islands and of all parts of them, the Peak, shining over
+clouds and visible from far seas, is the king and chief. I left its
+fiery summit with a certain reluctance. It attracted me strangely. It
+represented, feebly enough, I daresay, the greatest of all elemental
+forces. Yet its faint fires and its smoke and sulphur fumes had all the
+power of a mighty symbol. By such means, by such a formula, had the very
+world itself been made. Though snow lay upon its slopes and ice bound
+ancient blocks of lava together, it might at any hour awake again and
+renew the terrors which once must have floated over the seas in a gust
+of flame.
+
+
+
+
+SHEEP AND SHEEP-HERDING
+
+
+With the introduction of fences, which are now coming in with tremendous
+rapidity, sheep-herding as an art is inevitably doomed. When I knew
+north-west Texas a few years ago there was not a fence between the Rio
+Grande and the north of the Panhandle, but now barbed or plain wire is
+the rule, and in the pastures it is, of course, not so necessary to look
+after the sheep by day and night. In Australia I have not seen those
+under my charge for a week or more at a time. While there was water in
+the paddock I never even troubled to hunt them up in the hundred square
+miles of grey-green plain with its rare clumps of dwarf box. If dingoes
+were reported to be about I kept my eyes open, of course, but they were
+very rare in the Lachlan back blocks, and I was never able to earn the
+five shillings reward for the tail of this yellow marauder. But in Texas
+there are more wild animals--the coyote, the bear, the "panther" or
+puma--and it is impossible to leave the sheep entirely to their own
+devices, even in pastures which prevent them wandering. Nevertheless,
+looking after them on fenced land is very different from being with them
+daily and hourly, sleeping with them at night, following and directing
+them by day, being all the time wary lest some should be divided from
+the main flock by accident, or lest the whole body should spy another
+sheep-owner's band and rush tumultuously into it.
+
+But the new and unaccustomed shepherd on the prairie is apt to give
+himself much unnecessary trouble. It takes some time to learn that a
+flock of sheep is like a loosely-knit organism which will not separate
+or divide if it can help it. It might be compared with a low kind of
+jelly-fish, or even to a sea-anemone, for under favourable conditions of
+sun and sky it spreads out to feed, leaving between each of its members
+what is practically a constant distance. For when the weather changes
+they come closer together, and any alarm puts them into a compact mass.
+I have heard a gun fired unexpectedly, and then seen some 2000 sheep,
+spreading loosely over an irregular circle, about half a mile in
+diameter, rush for a common centre with an infallible instinct. And
+then they gradually spread out again like that same sea-anemone putting
+forth its filaments after being touched.
+
+The new shepherd, however, is in constant dread lest they should
+separate and divide so greatly that he will lose control of them. I have
+walked many useless miles endeavouring to keep a flock within unnatural
+limits before I discovered that they never went more than a certain
+distance from the centre. And this distance varied strictly with the
+numbers. At night time they begin to draw together, and if they are not
+put in a corral or fold will at last lie down in a fairly compact mass,
+remaining quiet, if undisturbed, until the approach of dawn. But if they
+have had a bad day for feeding they sometimes get up when the moon rises
+and begin to graze. Then the shepherd may wake up, and, finding he is
+alone, have to hunt for them. As they usually feed with their heads up
+wind it is not as a rule hard to discover them. If the moon is covered
+by a cloudy sky they will often camp down again.
+
+The hardest days for the shepherd are cold ones, when it blows strongly.
+For then the sheep travel at a great pace, and will not go quietly
+until the sun comes out of the grey sky of the chilly norther, which
+perhaps moderates towards noon. But in such weather they do not care to
+camp at noonday, and instead of spreading they will travel onward and
+onward. They doubtless feel uncomfortable and restless. After such a day
+they are uneasy at night, especially when there is a moon.
+
+It is my opinion, after experience of both conditions, that unherded
+sheep do much better than those which are closely looked after. In
+Australia our percentage of lambs was sometimes 104, and any squatter
+would think something wrong if his sheep on the plain yielded less than
+90 per cent. increase. But in Texas, where the mothers are watched and
+helped, the increase is seldom indeed 75 in the 100, much oftener it is
+60. I used to wonder whether the losses by wild animals would have
+equalled the loss of 25 per cent. increase which is, I believe, entirely
+due to the care taken of them. For herding is essentially a worrying
+process, even when practised by a man who understands sheep well. The
+mothers are never left alone, and must be driven to a corral at night.
+Consequently they often get separated from their lambs before they come
+to know them, and one of the most pitiful things seen by a shepherd is
+the poor distracted ewe refusing to recognise her own offspring even
+when it is shown to her. We used in such cases to put them together in a
+little pen during the night, hoping that she would "own" it by the
+morning. But very often she would not, and then the lamb usually died.
+If, indeed, it was one of a more sturdy constitution than most, it would
+refuse to die and became a kind of Ishmael in the flock. The milk which
+was necessary it took, or tried to take, from the ewe, who, for just a
+moment, might not know a stranger was trying to share the right of her
+own lamb. Such an orphan rarely grows up, and most of them die quickly,
+as they are knocked about and cruelly used by those who take no interest
+in the disinherited outcast of that selfish ovine society. And yet its
+real mother is in the flock, reconciled to her loss after a few days of
+suffering.
+
+In spite of my present very decided disinclination to have anything to
+do with sheep, they are, like every other animal, very interesting when
+closely studied. I spent some years in their society in New South Wales
+and know a little about them. Shortly before I left Ennis Creek ranch in
+North-west Texas a very curious incident occurred, which I could never
+quite satisfactorily explain, for I believe the most serious fright I
+have ever had in all my life was caused by these same inoffensive,
+innocent quadrupeds. It was not inflicted on me by a ram, which is
+occasionally bellicose, but by ewes with their lambs, and I distinctly
+remember being as surprised as if the sky had fallen or something
+utterly opposed to all causation had confronted me. I want to meet a
+man, even of approved courage, who would not be shocked into fair fright
+by having half-a-dozen ewes suddenly turn and charge him with the fury
+of a bullock's mad onset. Would he not gasp, be stricken dumb, and look
+wide-eyed at the customary nature about him, just as if they had broken
+into awful speech? I imagine he would, for I know that it shook my
+nerves for an hour afterwards, even though I had by that time recovered
+sufficient courage to experiment on them in order to see if the same
+result would again follow. I had about 500 ewes and lambs under my care.
+The day was warm, though the wind was blowing strongly, and when noon
+approached the flock travelled but slowly towards the place where I
+wished them to make their mid-day camp. To urge them on I took a large
+bandana handkerchief and flicked the nearest to me with it as I walked
+behind. As I did so the wind blew it strongly, and it suddenly occurred
+to me to make a sort of a flag of it in order to see if it would
+frighten them. I took hold of two corners and held it over my head, so
+that it might blow out to its full extent. Now, whether it was due to
+the glaring colour, or the strange attitude, or to the snapping of the
+outer edge of the handkerchief in the wind--and I think it was the
+last--I cannot say, but the hindmost ewes suddenly stopped, turned
+round, eyed me wildly, and then half-a-dozen made a desperate charge,
+struck me on the legs, threw me over, and fled precipitately as I fell.
+It was a reversal of experience too unexpected! I lay awhile and looked
+at things, expecting to see the sun blue at the least, and then I
+gathered myself together slowly. In all seriousness I was never so taken
+aback in all my life, and I was almost prepared for a ewe's biting me. I
+remembered the Australian story of the rich squatter catching a man
+killing one of his sheep. "What are you doing that for?" he inquired as
+a preliminary to requesting his company home until the police could be
+sent for. The questioned one looked up and answered coolly, though not,
+I imagine, without a twinkle in his eye, "Kill it! Why am I killing it?
+Look here, my friend, I'll kill any man's sheep as bites _me_." For my
+part, I don't think biting would have alarmed me more. After that I made
+experiments on the ewes, and always found that the flying bandana simply
+frightened them into utter desperation when nothing else would. It was a
+long time before they got used to it. I should like to know if any other
+sheep-herders ever had the same experience at home or abroad.
+
+In another book I spoke of lambs when they were very young taking my
+horse for their mother. This was in California; but in Texas I have
+often seen them run after a bullock or steer. One day on the prairie a
+lamb had been born during camping-time, and when it was about two hours
+old a small band of cattle came down to drink at the spring. Among these
+was a very big steer, with horns nearly a yard long, who came close to
+the mother, just then engaged in cleaning her offspring. She ran off,
+bleating for her lamb to follow. The little chap, however, came to the
+conclusion that the steer was calling it, and went tottering up to the
+huge animal, that towered above him like the side of a canyon, apparently
+much to the latter's embarrassment. The steer eyed it carefully, and
+lifted his legs out of the way as the lamb ran against them, even
+backing a little, as if as surprised as I had been when the ewes
+assaulted me. Then all of a sudden he shook his head as if laughing, put
+one horn under the lamb, threw it about six feet over his back, and
+calmly walked on. I took it for granted that the unwary lamb was dead,
+but on going up I found it only stunned, and, being as yet all gristle,
+it soon recovered sufficiently to acknowledge its real mother, who had
+witnessed its sudden elevation, stamping with fear and anxiety.
+
+Sheep-herding is supposed, by those who have never followed it, to be an
+easy, idle, lazy way of procuring a livelihood; but no man who knows as
+much of their ways as I do will think that. It is true that there are
+times when there is little or nothing to be done--when a man can sit
+under a tree quietly and think of all the world save his own particular
+charge; but for the most part, if he have a conscience, he will feel a
+burden of responsibility upon him which of itself, independently of the
+work he may have to do, will earn him his little monthly wage of twenty
+dollars and the rough ranch food of "hog and hominy." For there is no
+ceasing of labour for the Texas herder of the plains; Sunday and
+week-day alike the dawning sun should see him with his flock, and even
+at night he is still with them as they are "bedded out" in the open.
+Even if he can "corral" them in a rough sort of yard, some slinking
+coyote may come by and scare them into breaking bounds; and when they
+are not corralled the bright moon may entice them to feed quietly
+against the wind, until at last the herder wakes to find his charge has
+vanished and must be anxiously sought for. In Australia, as I have said,
+the sheep are left to their own devices for the greater part of the
+year, unless there should be unusual scarcity of water; but even there,
+to have charge of so many thousand animals, and so many miles of
+fencing, makes it no enviable task, while the labour, when it does come,
+is hard and unremitting. In New South Wales I have often been eighteen
+and twenty hours in the saddle, and have reached home at last so wearied
+out that I could scarcely dismount. One day I used up three horses and
+covered over ninety miles, more than fifty of it at a hard canter or
+gallop--and if that be not work I should like to know what is. This,
+too, goes on day after day during shearing, just when the days are
+growing hot and hotter still, the spare herbage browning, and the water
+becoming scanty and scantier. And for a recompense? There is none in
+working with sheep. They are quiet, peaceable, stupid, illogical,
+incapable of exciting affection, very capable of rousing wrath; far
+different from the terrible excitement of a bellowing herd of
+long-horned cattle as they break away in a stampede, among whom is
+danger and sudden death and the glory of motion and conquest; or with
+horses thundering over the plain in hundreds, like a riderless squadron
+shaking the ground with waving manes, long flowing tails, and flashing
+eyeballs, whom one can love and delight in, and shout to with a strange,
+vivid joy that sends the blood tingling to the heart and brain. Were I
+to go back to such a life I would choose the danger, and be discontented
+to maunder on behind the slow and harmless wool-bearers, cursing a
+little every now and again at their foolishness, and then plodding on
+once more, bunched up in an inert mass on a slow-going horse, who
+wearily stretches his neck almost to the ground as he dreams, perhaps,
+of the long, exhilarating gallops after his own kind that we once had
+together, being conscious, I daresay, of the contemptuous pity I feel
+for the slow foredoomed muttons that crawl before us on the long and
+weary plain.
+
+It is highly probable that the introduction of fences will have its
+effect in other ways than in increasing the number of lambs born and
+reared. Sheep-herding will almost disappear when the wild beasts of
+Texas are extinct, as they soon will be, for a fenced country is very
+unfit for such animals. But then the natural glory of the wide open
+prairie will be gone, and civilisation will gradually destroy all that
+was so delightful, even when my sheep, by worrying me, taught me what I
+have here set down.
+
+
+
+
+RAILROAD WARS
+
+
+Everybody nowadays has some notion of the way the railroad business of
+America is carried on. They know that there are too many roads for the
+traffic, and that, to prevent a general ruin, the managers combine, pay
+the profits into the hands of a receiver, and receive again from him a
+certain agreed proportion of the whole sum. But this method of "pooling"
+the profits is sometimes unsatisfactory. One line will think it gets too
+little if the fluctuations of trade send more freight over its rails
+than it formerly had, and will demand a greater proportion of the gross
+profits. This demand may be granted, but if not, the agreement may break
+down, and the discontented railroad go to work on the old principle of
+every man for himself. This very likely inaugurates a war of tariffs;
+fares and freights go down slowly or quickly according as the quarrel
+is open or secret, until one or other of the parties gives in to avoid
+complete ruin.
+
+While I was living in San Francisco, early in 1886, there was an open
+war between all the lines west of Chicago and Kansas City, including the
+Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande, the
+Southern Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Fares to New
+York and the Atlantic seaboard came tumbling down by $10 at a fall. The
+usual rate from New York to San Francisco is $72. It fell to 60, to 50,
+40, 30, to 25, to 22. All the railroad offices had great placards
+outside inviting everyone to go East at once, for they would never get
+such a chance again. Some of the notices were very odd. One began with
+"Blood, blood, blood!" and another had a hand holding a bowie knife,
+with the legend "Here we cut deep!" And, as I have said, they did cut
+deep, for at the end one might go to New York for about $18. Now this
+$18 went in a lump to the railroad east of Chicago. Consequently the
+passengers were carried over 2000 miles for nothing. Frequently during
+two days men were booked to Chicago or Kansas City from San Francisco
+or Los Angeles for $1. Two thousand miles for 4s. 2d!
+
+Such a state of things could not last, but while it did it gave rise to
+much speculation. Many men bought up tickets, good for some time,
+believing the bottom prices had been reached when the fall had by no
+means ended. It was odd to stand outside an office and listen to the
+crowd. Some would hold on and say, "I'll chance it till to-morrow." Then
+I have seen an agent come outside and say, "Gentlemen, now's your time
+to go east and visit your families. Don't delay. Of course fares may
+fall further, but I think not. Don't be too greedy. You are not likely
+to get the chance again of going home for twenty-five dollars." They did
+fall further, but recovered again on the rumour of negotiations
+beginning between the competing lines. When that was contradicted they
+fell again. Suddenly, without any warning, they jumped up to normal
+rates, and left many of the outside public--the bears, so to
+speak--lamenting that they had not taken the opportunity so eloquently
+pointed out by the oratorical agents on the sidewalk by the offices. For
+the placards and pictures came down at once, and to an inquirer who
+asked, "What can you do New York at?" the answer was, "Why, sir, the
+usual rate--$72."
+
+To an Englishman who has not travelled in the States and become familiar
+with the methods employed there by business men, it seems odd that
+anyone should chaffer with the clerk at a ticket-office. What would an
+English booking-clerk say if he were asked about the fare to some place,
+and, on replying L1, received the rejoinder, "I'll give you 15s?" He
+would think the man a joker of a very feeble description. Yet this may
+often be done in Western America. Even when there is no "war" the agents
+have a certain margin to veer and haul on in their commission, and will
+often knock off a little sooner than allow a rival line to get the
+passenger. Besides, it frequently happens that there may be a secret
+cutting of rates without an open war. My own experience, when I came
+down from Sonoma County in the autumn of 1886, meaning to return to
+England, will give a very good notion of this, and of the way to get a
+cheap ticket when there is the trouble among the companies which may end
+in a war, or be patched up by arbitration.
+
+It had been said in the papers for some time that rate-cutting was
+going on in San Francisco, and this made me hurry down not to lose the
+opportunity. The morning after my arrival I walked into an office in
+Kearney Street and said briefly, "What are you doing to New York?" The
+clerk said in a business way, "Seventy-two dollars." I laughed a little
+and looked at him straight without speaking. "Hum," said he; "well, you
+can go for sixty-five." "Thanks," I said, "it isn't enough." I walked
+out, and though he called me back I would not return. Then I went to Mr
+P., a well-known agent for railroads and steamships. To use a vulgarism,
+he did not open his mouth so wide as the other, but at once offered me a
+through ticket to Liverpool for $72. I thanked him and said I would call
+again. Deducting the $12 for a steerage passage, his railroad fare was
+$60. So far I had knocked off 12. And now it began to rain very hard. It
+did not cease all day. And my day's work was only begun, for it was only
+ten o'clock then. I went from one office to another, quoting one's rates
+here and another's there, and slowly I dropped the fare to fifty. I had
+to explain to some of these men that I was not a fool, and that I knew
+what I was doing; that if they took me for a "tenderfoot," or a
+"sucker," they were mistaken. My explanations always had an effect, and
+down the fare tumbled. At last, about three o'clock, I had got things to
+a very fine point, and was working two rival offices which stood side by
+side near the Palace Hotel. One man--Mr A., whom I knew by name, who
+indeed knew a friend of mine--offered me $45. I shook my head, and going
+next door, Mr V. made it a dollar less. It took me half-an-hour to
+reduce that again to forty-three; but at last Mr A., who was as much
+interested in this little game as if I were a big stake at poker, went
+suddenly down to $41. I offered to toss him whether it should be $40 or
+$42. He accepted, and I won the toss. As he made out the ticket, he
+remarked, almost sadly, "We don't make anything out of this." But he
+cheered up, and added, "Well, the others don't either." So I got my
+ticket; and it was over one of the best lines. By that day's work,
+though I got wet through, covered with mud, and very tired, I saved $32.
+
+When on board the east-bound train next day I got talking with some
+dozen men who were going east with me, and, naturally enough, we asked
+each other what fares we had paid, I found they varied greatly, but the
+average was about $60. One little Jew, a tobacconist, was very proud
+that his only cost $48. He almost wept when I told him that I beat him
+by eight whole dollars. Moreover, I reached New York twenty hours before
+him, for when we parted at Chicago we made arrangements to meet in New
+York, and then I found that he had been obliged to round into Canada,
+and lie over all one night, while I had come direct on the Chicago and
+Alton with only two hours' wait at Lima; so on the whole I did not think
+I did very badly.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS
+
+
+It may seem strange to people who are entirely unacquainted with the
+methods of shipmasters and officers generally in the American mercantile
+marine that a sailor should have such a deadly objection to sail in one
+of their vessels; but those who know the hideous brutalities which
+continually occur on such ships will quite understand the feelings of a
+man who finds himself on a vessel which would probably have been manned
+willingly if it had not a bad character among seamen. I have known an
+American vessel lie six weeks and more off Sandridge, Melbourne, waiting
+for a crew, which she could not get, although men were very plentiful
+and the boarding-houses full. There are some vessels running from New
+York, etc., round the Horn to San Francisco, which have a villainous
+reputation. The captain of one of these was sentenced to eighteen
+months in the Penitentiary when I was in the great Pacific Port for
+incredible atrocities practised on his crew. For one thing, he shot
+repeatedly at men who were up aloft, and hit one of them who was on the
+main-yard, though not so seriously as to make him quit his hold of the
+jack-stay. One of the ship's boys was treated with barbarity during the
+whole passage; thrashed, beaten, starved, and ill-used in the vilest
+manner; and at last the captain knocked him down and jumped on his face
+so as to blind him for life. This man went a little too far, and the
+courts, which are always biassed, and very much biassed considering
+their origin, on the side of rich authority, were compelled to do their
+duty by the uproar that this last incident caused. Yet even after that
+the people connected with the shipping interests got up petitions, and
+intrigued and wire-pulled for months to get the Governor of California
+to pardon him. Failing in this, they approached the President; but I am
+heartily glad their efforts were vain.
+
+One of my own shipmates in the _Coloma_, of Portland, Oregon, was once
+with a commander of this class, and so bad was his reputation that no
+one among the crew knew until they were under way who the captain was.
+My mate said, "I was at the wheel when I saw him come up the companion,
+and, as I had sailed with him before, my blood ran cold when I
+recognised him. He came straight up to the wheel, stared at me, and
+asked me, 'Haven't you sailed with me before?' 'Yes, sir,' I answered.
+Then he grinned, 'Ha, then you know me. When you go forward you tell the
+crowd what kind of a man I am, and tell them that if they behave
+themselves I'll be a father to 'em.' I knew what his being a father to
+us meant. However, I didn't see any good in scaring the fellows, so when
+my trick was over I told them the skipper was a real beauty. Just then
+there was a roar from the poop, 'Relieve the wheel'; and the man who had
+relieved me came staggering forrard with his face smothered in blood. He
+had let her run off a quarter of a point or so, and the skipper, without
+saying a word, struck him right between the eyes with the end of his
+brass telescope, cutting his nose and forehead in great gashes. That was
+his way of being a father to us, and he kept it up all the passage. The
+first chance I got I skinned out!"
+
+It is true that the American mercantile marine is not so bad as it was.
+These things do not occur in all vessels, but even yet they occur so
+frequently that an English sailor would, as a general rule, rather sail
+with the devil himself than an American skipper. What the state of
+affairs was some twenty or thirty years ago one can hardly imagine, but
+it certainly was much worse then. Shanghai-ing is not so much practised.
+There is a story current among seamen, though I know not how true it is,
+that it was checked owing to the lieutenant of an English man-of-war
+being drugged and carried on board an American merchant-man. However,
+there is now, or was but lately, a boarding-house keeper in San
+Francisco whose Christian or first name had been abolished in favour of
+"Shanghai." I had the very doubtful honour of knowing him, and could
+easily believe any stories told of his chicanery and treachery to
+sailormen.
+
+
+
+
+TRAMPS
+
+
+The poor tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he
+often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is
+often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy--and
+something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct
+classes of tramps--those who take the road to look for work, and those
+(the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that
+they may never find it. In this preponderance of the lazy traveller over
+the industrious lies the distinction between the state of affairs in
+America and Australia, for in the latter country the "sundowner," or
+"murrumbidgee whaler," or "hobo" proper, is in the minority.
+
+When I was on the tramp myself in Oregon I was much annoyed by being
+taken for one of the truly idle kind. I remember at Roseberg, or a
+little to the north of it, I once stopped and had a talk with a farmer
+whom I had asked for work. Although he had none to give me he was very
+civil, and we talked of tramps and tramping. He looked at me keenly. "I
+can see you are not of the regular professionals," said he. "Thank you
+for your perspicacity," I answered, and though perspicacity fairly
+floored him, he saw it was not an insult, and went on talking. "Now look
+here, my boy, they say we're hard on tramps, and perhaps some of us are,
+but I reckon we sometimes get enough to make us rough. Last summer I was
+in my orchard, picking cherries, I think, and a likely-looking, strong
+young fellow comes along the road. Seeing me, he climbs the fence, and
+says to me, 'Say, boss, could you give me something to eat? I haven't
+had anything to-day.' I looked at him. 'Why, yes,' said I. 'If you'll go
+up to the house I'll be up there in a few minutes when I've filled this
+pail; and while you're waiting just split a little wood. The axe is on
+the wood pile.' Now, look you, what d'ye think he said. 'I don't split
+wood. I ain't going to do any work till I get to Washington Territory.'
+'Oh!' said I, 'that's it, is it? Then look here, young fellow, don't you
+eat anything till you get there either; for I won't give you anything,
+and just let me see you climb that fence in a hurry.' So he went off
+cursing. Ain't that kind of thing enough to make us rough on
+tramps?--let alone that they steal the chickens; and if you look as you
+go down the road you'll see feathers by every place they camp." That was
+true enough, and south of the Umpqua I used to find goose feathers every
+few hundred yards. On that same tramp down through Oregon I once met
+four men travelling north. There had been a murder committed by a tramp
+in the south of Roseberg, and we stopped under an old scrubby oak to
+talk it over. Three of them were working men, but the fourth was a true
+professional, about fifty years of age, whose clothes were ragged to the
+last extremity of tatters. His hands were brown at the backs, but I
+noticed, when I gave him some tobacco, which he very promptly asked for,
+that the palms were perfectly soft. He told us how long he had
+travelled, and how many years it was since he had done any work; and,
+finally rising, he picked up a wretched-looking blanket, and said,
+"Well, good-day, gentlemen. I'm off to call on the Mayor of Portland and
+a few rich friends of mine up there." He winked good-humouredly and
+shambled off.
+
+I met a lame young fellow near Jacksonville, who told me he had come all
+the way from New York State, and was thinking of going back. He was in
+very good spirits, and did not appear in the least dismayed at the
+prospect of tramping 2000 miles, for he was one of those who do not use
+the railroad and "beat their way." When I was at work in Sonoma County,
+California, a little fellow came and worked for ten days, who once
+travelled 200 miles inside the cowcatcher of an engine. Most English
+people know the wedge-shaped pilot in front of the American engine well
+enough by repute to recognise it. When the engine was in the yard over
+the hollow track he crawled in, taking a board to sit on inside. When
+the locomotive once ran out on the ordinary track it was impossible to
+remove him, although the fireman soon discovered his presence there, and
+poured some warm water over him. On coming to a little town about fifty
+miles from his destination the constable came down to the train. "He
+came," said Hub (that was our tramp's name) "to see that no tramps get
+off there, or, if they did, to advise them to clear out. He walked to
+the engine and said 'Good day' to the driver. 'Got any tramps on board
+to-day, Jack?' he said. 'We've got one,' he answered; 'but we can't get
+him off.' 'Why? how's that?' said the constable. 'Go and look at the
+pilot.' So he came round and looked at me, and he burst into a laugh.
+'All right, Jack,' says he, 'you can keep him. He won't trouble us, I
+can see.' And with that he poked me with his stick, and called everyone
+to take a look. I said nothing, but you bet I felt mean to be cooped up
+there, not able to move, with all the folks laughing at me."
+
+But, in spite of Hub's sad experience, he went off on the tramp again as
+soon as he had enough to buy a pair of new boots with.
+
+Tramps--that is, the bad ones among them--are very often insolent when
+they find no one but women in the house. Once a man I knew was working
+in Indiana, but having a bad headache he remained in one morning.
+By-and-by a truculent-looking tramp came along. "Kin you give us suthin'
+to eat, ma'am?" he growled. "Certainly," said the woman, who was always
+kind to travellers. She set about making him a meal and put out some
+bread and meat. The tramp, who certainly did not look hungry, eyed it
+with disfavour. "Bah!" said he at last, with intense contempt; "I don't
+want that stuff. D'ye think I'm starving? A'nt you got suthing
+nice--say, some strawberry shortcake and cream?" The woman stared with
+astonishment, as well she might. But the man with the headache heard Mr
+Tramp's remarks. There was a shot-gun hanging in the room where he was;
+so, slipping off the bed, he reached for the weapon, walked out quietly,
+and, thrusting the muzzle of the gun under the tramp's ear, he roared in
+a fierce voice "Get!" And, to use the vernacular, the tramp "got"
+instantly.
+
+The last story I will tell of tramps is perhaps the most audacious of
+all. I met the chief actor in British Columbia. It appears that he and
+another man went one Sunday to a very respectable farmhouse in Illinois
+to beg for food. They knocked and there was no answer. They knocked
+again, and still without avail. Then they opened the unlocked door and
+went in. The dining-table was laid ready for a feast, as it seemed, for
+it was adorned with an admirable cold collation, including a turkey,
+several fowls, and a number of pies. The eyes of my acquaintance and
+his partner sparkled. Here was a chance, for the family was at church.
+They went out, got a sack, and hastily tumbled into it the turkey, the
+fowls, some bread, and the most substantial pies. Just as it was getting
+full one looked out of the window and saw a man coming up the path. They
+were struck with terror of discovery, but on watching they soon saw that
+this was a tramp like themselves. He came up and knocked at the door.
+"Can you give me something to eat, sir?" he asked humbly. "I guess so,"
+said my acquaintance, coolly; "that is, if you ain't one of the tramps
+that won't work. Will you cut some wood for your dinner?" "Of course I
+will," said the tramp, gladly, and he went to the wood pile. While he
+was at work the two spoilers of the Egyptians departed through the back
+door, and went about a hundred yards to the corner of a wood, where they
+laughed till they cried. The result of their manoeuvre was sure to be
+too good to be lost, so one of them climbed up a tree and watched. In
+about a quarter of an hour he saw a string of men and women coming
+towards the house, and still the working tramp made the chips fly. On
+entering the yard one of the men went up to interview him, and by the
+tramp's gestures it was evident that he was explaining that he had been
+set to work. Meanwhile, the women went in, but came out again in a
+moment, shrieking with indignation. The next sight was the farmer armed
+with a stick belabouring the astonished worker, who fled across the
+fence incontinently. He was followed to the very verge of the wood, and
+then the exhausted "mossback" left him to return to the house. "It was
+just the funniest thing I ever saw," declared my unabashed friend; "and
+to see that poor fellow get whipped for our sins nearly killed me. But I
+tell you we rewarded him for his labour after all. We found him sitting
+on a stump rubbing himself all over, and invited him to dinner with us.
+So, you see, he got the grub we promised him, and he didn't work for
+nothing, for that would just kill a tramp."
+
+
+
+
+TEXAS ANIMALS
+
+
+The fauna of Texas is very varied, and a naturalist may find plenty
+there for his note-book, and much to reflect on, if he be a
+contemplative man. A hunter may satisfy himself, too, if he goes into
+the extreme west and north-west, but he must be quick about it, for I
+received a letter years ago from a friend of mine in the south part of
+the Panhandle of Texas, in which he told me that all the land was
+getting fenced in, even in those parts that I knew in 1884 as wide and
+open prairie, and when fences come the beasts go, deer and antelope
+retreat, and "panther" or cougar are hunted and shot by those who own
+sheep, cattle and horses. I am no naturalist, and no great hunter. At
+the risk of causing a smile of contempt I must confess that I can hold a
+shot-gun, a "double-pronged scatter-gun," or a rifle in my hands without
+shooting at anything I see. I have let antelope and deer pass me without
+even letting the gun off, and have spared squirrels and birds
+innumerable that most of my friends would have promptly slain; but I
+take great interest in animal life, and am fond of watching the denizens
+of prairie or forest.
+
+When on my friend Jones's ranche in 1884 I sometimes went wild turkey
+hunting or potting; we used to choose a moonlight night and lie under
+the trees, where they roosted, and shoot them on the branches. It was
+mere butchery, and the sole excitement consisted in the doubt as to
+whether any of the big birds would come or not, and the chief interest
+to me was the conversation of my wild Texan friends, who were stranger
+than turkeys to me.
+
+There were not many birds of prey around us, except the big slow-sailing
+turkey-buzzards, which are protected by law as useful scavengers.
+Nevertheless, I shot at one once, and having missed it I never tried
+again.
+
+My great friends were the hares or jackrabbits, which are fast, but very
+easy to shoot, for if I saw one coming my way, loping or cantering
+along, I stood stock-still, and he would come past me without taking the
+least notice of my presence, probably imagining I was only a
+curious-shaped stump. Sometimes I found them in the dry arroyos or
+water-courses, and threw stones at them. They rarely ran away at once
+at full speed, but for the most part went a little distance and sat up
+to look at me, waiting for two or three stones, until they made up their
+minds that I was decidedly dangerous.
+
+Another little animal was the cotton-tail rabbit, so called from the
+white patch of fur under the tail, which is as bright as cotton bursting
+from the pod, I killed one once more by impulse than anything else. It
+ran from under my feet when I had a knife in my hand. I threw it at the
+rabbit, and to my surprise knocked it over, for I am a very bad shot
+with that sort of missile.
+
+The prairie dogs or marmots were in tens of thousands round us, and I
+used to amuse myself by shooting at one in particular with the rifle.
+His hole was a hundred yards from our camp, and he would come out and
+sit on his hill every now and again, and then go nibbling round at the
+grass. I shot at him a dozen times, and once cut the ground under his
+belly, but never killed him. They are extremely hard to get even if
+shot, for they manage to run into their burrows somehow, even if
+mortally wounded. The Texans believe they go back even when quite dead;
+but then they are rather credulous, for some of them believe that the
+rattlesnake lives on friendly terms with the inmates of the burrows. The
+rattlesnakes were very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first
+one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I
+smashed it into pieces, while I trembled like a horse who has nearly
+stepped on a venomous snake. Those Texans who do not believe in the
+friendship of snake and prairie dog say that it is possible to make the
+rattler come out of a hole he has taken refuge in by rolling small
+pieces of dirt and earth down it. For they assert that the prairie dogs
+earth up the mouth of the burrow when they know a snake is in it, and
+the reptile knows what is about to happen.
+
+Of other snakes there were the moccasins, water snakes, and esteemed
+very deadly. It is said that when an Indian is bitten by one of these he
+lies down to die without making any effort to save his life, whereas if
+a rattlesnake has harmed him he usually cures himself. Besides these
+there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver
+coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous
+size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles
+from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom
+I knew. One night he heard a noise, and looking out of his bunk saw by
+the dim light of the fire an enormous snake crawling out of a hole in
+the corner of the room. He jumped out of bed and ran outside, and found
+a stick. He killed it, and it measured nearly eleven feet. It is called
+bull snake because it is popularly supposed to bellow, but I never heard
+it make any noise of such description.
+
+On these prairies there are occasionally to be found cougars, commonly
+called panthers or "painters," although erroneously. In British Columbia
+they are called mountain lions, and the same name is applied to them in
+California, unless they are called California lions. I am informed by a
+naturalist friend that they are the same species as the South American
+puma. I knew a man in Colorado City who was a great hunter of these
+animals, and he had half a dozen hunting dogs torn and scratched all
+over their bodies, with ears missing, and one with half a tongue, who
+had suffered from the teeth and claws of these cougars. He kept one in a
+cage which was much too small for it, and I was often tempted to poison
+it to put an end to its misery. This man had a regular menagerie at the
+back of his house, consisting of various birds, this cougar, and two
+bears.
+
+These bears are not infrequently to be met with on the prairies, and
+while I was staying in a town one was brought in in a wagon. Bruin had
+been captured by four cowboys, who had lassoed and tied it. He weighed
+about 600 lbs., and was a black bear, for the cinnamon and grizzly do
+not, I believe, range in open level country.
+
+Besides these harmful animals there were plenty of antelopes to be
+found, if one went to look for them, and the cowardly slinking coyote
+was often to be seen as one rode across the prairie; and often in
+walking I found tortoises with bright red eyes. These were small, about
+six inches long. In the creeks were plenty of mud turtles, which are
+fond of scrambling on to logs to sun themselves. If disturbed they drop
+into the water instantly, giving rise to a saying to express quickness,
+"like a mud turtle off a log."
+
+I have said nothing of bison. Perhaps there are none now, but in 1884
+there were supposed to be still a few on the Llano Estacado or Stakes
+Plain. I knew one man who used to go hunting them every year and usually
+killed a few. But the last time I saw him he was on a "jamboree," or
+spree, and killed his unfortunate horse by tying it up without feeding
+it or giving it water while he was drinking or drunk, and so he did not
+make his usual trip. But I imagine there can be few or none left now,
+and probably the only representatives of the race are in the National
+Park.
+
+
+
+
+IN A SAILORS' HOME
+
+
+After coming back to England from Australia in the barque _Essex_ I
+found "home" a curious place, which afforded very few prospects of a
+satisfactory job. For if there is one thing more than another borne in
+upon anyone who returns from the Colonies it is the apparent
+impossibility of earning one's living in London. Every avenue is as much
+choked as the entrance to the pit at a popular theatre on a first night.
+And though it is said that we may always get a tooth-brush into a
+portmanteau however full it is, there comes a time when not even a
+tooth-brush bristle can be put there. I looked at London, wandered round
+it, spent all my money, and determined to go to sea again, this time in
+a steamer rather than in a "wind-jammer." With this notion in my mind I
+went down to Hull, whither a shipmate of mine had preceded me. He had
+been a quarter-master in the _Essex_ and was the melancholy possessor
+of a cancelled master's certificate. He owed this to drink, of course,
+as most men do who pile their ships up on the first reef that comes
+handy. But when he was sober he was a good old fellow. He took me round
+to the Sailors' Home in Salthouse Lane, and introduced me to the man who
+ran it. I stayed there six weeks.
+
+The Sailors' Home as an institution is not over-popular with seamen,
+especially with the more improvident of them. And the improvident are
+certainly ninety per cent. of the total sea-going race of man. As a rule
+Homes cease to be such when a man's money is done. He is thrown out into
+the street or into some equivalent of the notorious Straw House. There
+is always much talk at sea about the relative advantages of
+Boarding-Houses and Homes, and half the arguments about the subject end
+in more or less of a "rough house" and a few odd black eyes. However
+rude and brutal the boarding-house master may be, however much of a
+daylight robber he is (and they mostly are "daylight robbers") it is to
+his advantage to make his house popular. There is no surer way of doing
+this than ensuring his boarder a ship at the end of his short spree on
+shore. In many Homes the men look after this themselves. Jack is a
+child and wants to be looked after. As far as the Home in Salthouse Lane
+went, I think it combined some of the better qualities of both the
+common resorts of men ashore. The boss of it knew something about
+seamen; he was certainly not a robber, and he kept me and several others
+when we did not possess a red cent among us to jingle on a tombstone. He
+also kept order, for he had had some experience as a prize-fighter, and
+could put the best of us on the floor at a moment's notice. Once or
+twice he did so, and peace reigned in Warsaw.
+
+There were certainly very few of us in the Home. Hull was not quite as
+full of sailors as hell is of devils, as a boarding-house master once
+assured me that San Francisco was when I tried to get taken into his
+house after being rejected even less politely by that eminent scoundrel
+Shanghai Brown. Besides myself there were a sturdy blue-nose or
+Nova-Scotian; a long-limbed, slab-sided herring-back or native of New
+Brunswick, a big thick-headed ass of an Englishman and a smart thief of
+a Cockney, known to us all as Ginger. We lived together without
+quarrelling more than three times a day. This we thought was peace. It
+was certainly more peaceful than my last boarding-house at
+Williamstown, where we had a little bloodshed every night. But there the
+very tables and benches were clamped to the floor; the windows were too
+high above us for anyone to be thrown out, and on a board nailed beyond
+our reach was the legend, "Order must and _will_ be preserved." But that
+boarding-house was very exciting; my last excitement In it was tripping
+up a man, treading on his wrist and taking away a razor with which he
+meant to cut throats. In Hull we never went further than a good common
+"scrap," though they happened fairly often.
+
+Times were not very brisk in Hull just then. At anyrate, we did not find
+them so. We had a "runner" at the Home, who was supposed to help us find
+a ship, but certainly did not. He was a very curious person to look at.
+He weighed eighteen stone and was a perfect giant of strength, with legs
+like columns and a neck about twenty inches round. I never found out
+what his nationality was. He looked like a Russian, but denied that he
+was one. It was said that he once fought six men in the lane and downed
+them all in sheer desperation. As a matter of fact, he was rather
+cowardly, I think, and easily put on, though if he had really got mad
+something would have had to give. We did not rely on him but looked for
+ships ourselves in a very casual way. Most of us pretended to look for
+them and loafed about the neighbouring slums. When sailormen are thrown
+on their own resources they are pretty helpless creatures. The man who
+is a lion on a topsail yard in a gale is too often like a wet cat in a
+backyard when he is ashore. I was lazy enough myself, but as it happened
+it was I who got something to do for Ginger, for the New Brunswicker and
+myself.
+
+I had not been living in the highly-desirable neighbourhood of Salthouse
+Lane for a week before I found myself without a stiver. The rest were in
+the same condition. Every three days or so I borrowed a penny from the
+boss and got a shave in order to keep up my spirits. Three days' beard
+is almost as depressing as three days' starvation, and the little shop
+at the corner, which renewed my self-respect for a penny, seemed to me a
+most admirable institution. As for drinks, we had none--we were sober
+sailors indeed. The sun might get over the fore-yard and go down over
+the cro'-jack but we never touched liquor. Nevertheless we had fights to
+relieve the monotony of the situation. The Nova Scotian and I took to
+being hostile. We disbelieved each other's lies. So one day while we
+were in the smoking-room he said something which was not at all polite.
+I could not knock him down with a chair because the careful and
+provident boss had had them chained to the floor. So I hit him, and hit
+him rather hard, for what he had said out of pure devilry. He was
+sitting on the table and I knocked him off. His particular mate was the
+very thick-headed Englishman. He did his best for the Nova Scotian by
+holding me very tight while the blue-nose hammered me. This was awkward,
+to say nothing about the unfairness of it. I got away but presently
+found myself across a bench with my back in danger of being broken. More
+by good luck than management I broke loose and got the blue-nose across
+the bench, I am thankful to say I nearly broke his back. Then we waltzed
+round the room in the wildest way, till the wife of the boss and the
+servant girl flew in and broke up the party with the most amazing
+energy. I was the youngest and the most civilised, and the women
+naturally said it was the Nova Scotian's fault. They said so in the most
+voluble manner, and the Nova Scotian did not like it. He said they took
+my part because I was not so ugly as he was, and said it wasn't fair,
+especially as I had spoilt what little beauty he had. He further
+asserted that he would knock the stuffing out of me, and we were on
+hostile terms for twenty-four hours. Two days later he got a job as
+bo'sun in a barque and his mate shipped with him, and peace was assured
+for a time.
+
+The food they gave us was rough but fairly good and plentiful. Wherever
+the meat came from it could be masticated with some effort. In Barclay's
+boarding-house, in Williamstown, we had to take a spell in the middle of
+a mouthful. I have seen steak there that would have pauled a
+chaff-cutter. In the dining-room at Salthouse Lane there lived the
+wildest, most eccentric clock I ever saw in all my travels. It had a
+most remarkable way of striking quite peculiar to itself. We used to
+dine at one o'clock. At noon the clock usually struck one. In very
+extravagant days it struck two. But no one could guess what it would
+strike when it was really one o'clock. I once counted seventy-two
+strokes, and on a public holiday it went up to a hundred and twenty. It
+was our only amusement.
+
+We were allowed to come in at almost any time. When the Nova Scotian and
+his mate had departed the Cockney and the herring-back and I used to
+run together and go waltzing round the back part of Hull pretty well all
+night. Once we sat on the steps of a bank for nearly four hours, between
+twelve and four. With us were two young ladies, who were possibly not
+very respectable but about whom I knew nothing as I had never seen them
+before and never saw them again, and another young sailor who was good
+at yarns. I didn't know his name. Absurd as it may seem we were all
+quite happy. The policeman on the beat saw that we were, and evidently
+hated to disturb us. He came past us three times, and each time asked us
+very nicely to go home. Next time he repeated his request, and as he
+said he would look on our doing so in the light of a personal favour to
+himself, we agreed to evacuate the bank at last.
+
+Our greatest privation at the Salthouse Lane establishment was want of
+tobacco. We rarely had any of it. I remember one day, when want of
+nicotine made me very sad, we went, on my suggestion, into the bag-room
+and pulled out our bags and chests. My chest was what seamen call a
+round-bottomed chest, _i.e._, a sailor's canvas bag. The beauty of it is
+that anything wanted is always at the bottom. In turning the bag out I
+found half a plug of tobacco. If we had been gold-mining and I had
+struck a "pocket," or come across big nuggets we could not have been
+happier. We sat in the smoking-room, and having divided the plug we had
+a grand debauch. Of course we sometimes begged a pipe or two from
+luckier men about the docks, but to find a real half plug was something
+to gloat over.
+
+When I had been in the Home nearly two months, and owed what seemed an
+amazing amount of money, I really began to think that if I could not
+ship in a steamer I must go in a wind-jammer again after all. So I
+really began to hunt round in earnest, and after trying all sorts and
+conditions of craft I landed on a job in the _Corona_ of Dundee. She was
+a biggish composite vessel of about seventeen hundred tons register,
+with that horrible thing, wire running rigging. In her I made the
+acquaintance of one of her old crew, who had stayed by her in Hull
+river, who told me various yarns of her behaviour at sea, and how one
+man had been killed in her on her homeward passage from San Francisco.
+As we got to be pals he suggested I should bring some more men if I knew
+of any in want of a job. I brought along Ginger and the herring-back,
+and we went to work cleaning out the limbers. It was not a nice job, for
+the limbers of a ship which has been carrying wheat are, to say the
+least of it, rather malodorous. We scraped the rotting black muck out
+with boards and scrapers, and sent it up on deck. It was a two and a
+half days' job. Then the mate set me over my two friends to "break out"
+casks of beef and pork from the fore-peak. As I hadn't been much to sea
+it rather amused me to find myself bossing two men who had been at it
+all their lives. But I have to own that they were two of the stupidest
+men I ever met, though they were not bad fellows. Then the time came for
+us to go to London by the "run." They offered us 30s. for the run to
+London river. This, with the five shillings a day I had earned by six
+days' work on board, made L3. I had practically spent nothing while I
+was working in her, although we left the Home too early in the morning
+to have breakfast there. We used to go to a coffee-stall near the dock
+entrance and get what is described by Cockneys as "two doorsteps and a
+cup of thick" for about 2d. We went home for dinner and supper. Thus I
+had nearly all my L3 for the boss of the Home. He got the money when we
+were out in the "stream" with the tug ahead of us.
+
+We were only one night at sea. We washed her down and cleaned her a bit
+generally and made her look a little decent, and I had the look-out that
+night. As we towed the whole distance we came up London river next
+afternoon. It was a gloomy and miserable day, which made London horrible
+to behold. It was like entering hell itself to come up into the parts
+where the big warehouses stand and where the docks are. We came at last
+to Limehouse, where she was to be dry-docked. I was at the wheel then,
+and it took us two hours before we got her in and had her settled down
+upon the blocks with the shores to hold her. Then I took my
+round-bottomed chest and left her. The mate, who had taken a fancy to
+me, asked me to ship in her for her next voyage, but I said I meant to
+"swallow the anchor" and have no more of that kind of work. My
+experience in Hull--the semi-starvation, the fighting, the loneliness
+and general blackguardism of the whole show--had somewhat sickened me of
+the life. And yet seamen are good fellows, and might be much better if
+it were not for the greed of owners, who feed them badly, house them
+vilely, and think of nothing in the world but dividends. Seamen know
+what they know, and they resent with bitterness the way they are
+treated. They have a bitter saying, "That's good enough for hogs, dogs
+and sailors." The day must come when England will cry to her children of
+the sea, and weep because they are not.
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORY OF THE MORNING
+
+
+According to his temperament a man's memory of travel and the strange
+wild places of the earth deals chiefly with one set of reminiscences or
+with another. For me the remembered mornings of the wide and lonely
+world, whether in the bush, or on the prairie, or the veldt, or at sea,
+are my chiefest delight. For in them, as in the morning even now, is
+something especial and peculiar which recalls and recreates youth: which
+breaks up the dead customs of to-day, and sends one back again to the
+swift, sweet hours of experiment and change. Assuredly the nights had
+their charm, whether they were spent by some great camp-fire on the
+winding Lachlan, in the darkness of a pine forest in British Columbia,
+or on the fo'c'sle-head of a ship upon the sea; and yet the night was
+the night, the prelude to sleep, and not to activity, the chief joy of
+man.
+
+I can recall how a morning broke for me once which was the morning of a
+kind of freedom almost appalling to the child of cities. This was the
+morning of youth, or rather of earliest manhood, when I was timid and
+yet unafraid, curious, and, after a manner, innocent, when I had slept
+by my first camp-fire, on the Bull Plains of Australia's Riverina. And
+yet I can remember nothing of those hours clearly. Rather is there in my
+mind as typical of the Australian dawn such hours as those I spent away
+beyond the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, on a station on the
+banks of the Willandra Billabong. It was early summer and shearing time
+for a hundred thousand sheep, whose fleeces were destined for Lyons and
+the North of England. I had dropped off a wearied horse close upon
+midnight, and yet by half-past three I was up once more. I stumbled
+sleepily in the starry darkness to the mare that was kept up, one
+Beeswing by name, a mare so swift and keen for a little while that to
+ride her was a delight. She whinnied and muzzled me all over as I put
+the saddle on her and drew the girths tight. Then I swung across her,
+and for some minutes she went gingerly, for she was unsound and wanted
+warming for the hot task before her. Yet it was her only work in the
+long day and she delighted in it even as I did. We picked our way across
+the shadows of big salt-bush and the rounded humps of cotton-bush, then
+brown and leafless, to the paddock, a mile square, where the other
+horses were at pasture, and as I rode sleep dropped away from me and my
+eyes opened and my lips grew moist as I sucked in the air of dawn. In
+the east the pale ghost of the day's forerunner stood waiting. The wind
+in that hot season came from the north; it had no intoxicating quality
+save that of comparative coolness after the furnace of yesterday. Yet
+how sweet it was, when I remembered the burning noon, the hot labours of
+the stock-yard and its dust as the ten thousand of that day's driving
+entered reluctantly. And in the darkness the plain stretched before me
+without a break for a thousand miles save for the Barrier Ranges. With
+no map on the whole station I knew not even of them, and as far as eye
+could reach not a rolling sand-dune marred the calm oceanic level of
+that brown sea of land.
+
+And now upon this morning, that yet was night, I was adrift upon a horse
+with a definite task in the great circle of immensity. The rest of the
+world was nothing, and I rode delicately over the rotten grey ground
+till the starshine dwindled and the day came up like a slow diver
+through dark waters. The pallid air was odorous as I rode with rolled-up
+sleeves and open breast, and I sang a little, for the night was out of
+me and my throat was sweet. And Beeswing warmed, and under me grew
+nimble, with the swing and easy spring of the dancer, and she reached
+out to feel the bit lightly with an unspoiled mouth and to feel my
+hands, and she raised her lean head and sniffed the air for her own kind
+that we were after. Were we not horse-hunting? She bent her neck and
+went as delicately as ever Agag went, and then bounded lightly over a
+hole in the rotten ground of the great horse-paddock. She and I were
+partners in the morning as the dawn came up. And now, indeed, the
+morning tide broke over the eastern bar, and was like a pale grey flood
+moving over level earth. Then she whinnied low as though she spoke to me
+in a whisper, and I saw one dark, moving shadow, and another, as she
+broke into a gallop. Oh, but out of seven alarmed shadows, fearful of
+work, I needed three, and neither Beeswing nor her rider could endure in
+their pride to drive in seven when a special chosen three were enough.
+The dawn's game began, and though it was yet dawn's dusk we went at a
+gallop. For Beeswing and I together were the swiftest two, or the
+swiftest one, on that great station by the Willandra. But though the
+night was not gone there was enough light to see which horses I needed
+and which horses I had to discard, and to note how they broke apart
+cunningly. For two went this way, and one that; and four split into
+units as I swung round the outside edge of them in a wide circle. The
+rottenness of the ground gave chances, and made it hazardous. But
+Beeswing knew her work and the paddock, and now she was warm and as keen
+as fire, and any touch of lameness went away from her. She stretched out
+her fine lean head, and her eyes were quick; her open nostrils almost
+smelt and swept the ground as her head swung to and fro. Beneath me she
+was live steel, tense and wonderful as she sprang to this side and that
+of danger, and yet galloped. Again and again she swerved, and then, as a
+ten-foot hole showed before her, she leapt it in her stride. And again,
+another and another, for here the ground was crumbling, patchy, sunken,
+with little rims of hard earth in between cup-like openings. And as we
+went, and the day came, I swung my long stock-whip and shouted when it
+cracked. I was on them, into them, and they broke back, being
+over-pressed. But Beeswing was a bred stock-horse, she knew the game and
+loved it. Back she swung right upon her haunches, and was away upon the
+hunt after a great raking mare called Mischief. We galloped almost side
+by side, and then Mischief quailed and turned coward. As Beeswing swung
+again I brought the whip down on my quarry's quarters.
+
+And now the joy of the game of dawn was great, for selection came in and
+the skill of the game. To-day I wanted Mischief and Black Jack and the
+grey mare. So as I galloped, still with swinging and reverberating whip,
+I edged up and put my knees into Beeswing. As she answered and sprang
+forward, with a rush I was within whip length of Mischief and Tom, with
+Mischief on the outside. One flick of the lash and the mare outpaced
+Tom, leaving him last of the seven. Had I edged up outside of him
+Beeswing might have doubted whether I wanted him or not, but I sent her
+up on his near side, and when I flicked him he plunged back and out and
+she let him go. There were six to deal with, though he came after us
+whinnying; yet not being urged he presently stayed, and then I shot
+forward again and cut off two that I did not want, and now among the
+four there was but one I wished to leave behind. They were well aware
+that one or more of them was not to work to-day, for I still hung upon
+them with some eager discrimination. They knew the final shout of
+victory as well as I who sent it up. But Lachlan, the horse I wished to
+leave, was the fastest of the four and kept ahead. So I ran them hard
+for a quarter of a mile and then edged out a little, and slowed down
+till they slowed and left a space betwixt the three and Lachlan. I
+suddenly spoke to Beeswing and shook her up till she came swiftly
+abreast of my three galloping like horses in a Roman chariot. Then
+left-handed I cut Lachlan in the flank, and with a swift turn Beeswing
+swept between him and the others. They stayed and turned while disparted
+Lachlan ran wildly. And now my three, being turned, ran back for the
+others; and Beeswing followed them like fire and came up with them, and
+once more turned them and sent them for home. To keep them going while
+the others whinnied meant urging; it meant filling their minds,
+occupying their attention. So once more, with a great shout, I was upon
+them and swung the whip, letting it fall with a crack first on this side
+and then on that, and now in the growing daylight the dust rose up as we
+galloped. And presently I saw the little "tin" house where the
+out-station boss lived, and the tent I shared with my chum the
+"rouseabout." And as we went fast and faster (for it was morning and I
+was young) the sun thrust up a shoulder behind me and it was day in
+Australia, day in the Lachlan back-blocks. And I could see Long Clump, a
+patch of dwarf-box, over my shoulder as I turned loosely in the saddle
+to note whether the other horses still followed. I laughed at the day
+(for it was dawn), and yet I knew as I ran my three into the yard that
+ere the day was done I should have ridden sixty miles, and have mustered
+20,000 sheep in Long Clump Paddock. And when I stayed outside the
+stock-yard and put up the slip panels and patted Beeswing on the neck
+the one great pleasure of the day was over. The rest was not to be
+accomplished in the dusk of dawn and under the morning star, but had to
+be wrought out in flying dust, amid the plague of flies and the fierce
+heat of an Austral noon, whose heat increased with the slow sun's
+decline. But that swift sweet hour of the morning had been my very own.
+The remainder of the day belonged to the world, to duty, to the man who
+paid me a pound a week and "tucker" for my hands and arms and as much
+brains as work with sheep demanded. Yet through these hours sometimes
+the glory of the morning remained.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are mornings on land and mornings on the sea, and when the world
+is a grey wash and a mask of spindrift it is good to be alive upon the
+sea, high on a topsail-yard, to see the grey return of the glory of the
+day. The work is often sheer murder, but it is the work of men, and
+though the skin cracks and the nails bleed, as the bulging, slatting,
+frantic canvas surges like a cast-iron wave, the thin red-shirted line
+along the jack-stay does heroic work without meaning it, without one
+touch of consciousness, without praise, and mostly without even that
+reward of a "tot" of grog so sweet to the simple-minded sailorman. Ah,
+yes, to be sure we were heroes, and I too (though now soft and
+self-conscious) played an Homeric part upon the yard, was bold, and
+afraid, and "funked" it with any god-smitten, panic-driven half-god by
+Scamander's banks, or the windy walls of Troy. Now I know what it was,
+and can see the grey wash of ocean, and the grey wash of white-faced
+morning with the great seas driving against the rising day, even as the
+rollers of the Atlantic surge against the base of a high berg. Little
+good men at home, fat men, rotund, easy souls, or those who are neither
+good, nor fat, nor easy, may stare and imagine yet not come near the
+reality when the wind booms and the sea rises, and the great concave of
+night sky flattens and presses down upon the driven ship, and men
+strive to escape doom and yet care not, and work till they are blind,
+and then drop down into the scant shelter of the deck, where the icy
+wind seems warm after the strife and bellowing up aloft. Heroes? To be
+sure we were heroes. What is being shot at a mile off, or a hundred
+yards off, to being shot at by the very heavens while one hangs over the
+gaping trenches of the sea? There is not an old shellback alive who has
+clung between angry heaven and the grey-green pastures of the deep but
+deserves a Victoria Cross for unconscious, dutiful, grumbling, growling
+valour. He might justly call every scanty dollar he earns a medal. For
+he has often fought in the Pacific, or by the Horn, or off the windy
+Cape. To recall the thick tempest at midnight, when the wind harps
+thunder on the stretched rigging, is to be a man again. If I blow their
+trumpet, the trumpet of the old sea-dogs, these scallawags, these
+Vikings, what matter if I seem to blow my own, having been their
+companion one campaign or two upon the deep? That "Me" is dead, I know,
+and can only be resurgent in memory, and will never laugh or feel afraid
+again when the slatting canvas jars one's very teeth. Yet to remember
+(as I can remember) how one wild night on the Southern Pacific grew into
+morning gives me back youth and morning again when I cared nothing for
+death, since death was as far off, as impossible, ay, as absurd, as Fame
+itself.
+
+It had blown hard all day, and an hour after midnight our scanty band,
+some ten of us (mostly Cockneys like myself), stood upon the foot-ropes
+of the lower fore-topsail. There should have been twenty, but to be
+undermanned has been English fashion since Agincourt. Growl we ever so
+loudly where could more be found? The work was to be done by ten, one
+more even was not to be asked for. If the task seemed possible, why, it
+was possible, and when we scrambled to that narrow line of battle in the
+dark it seemed as easy as most things at sea, where the difficult is
+done hourly. Risks are nothing there; to risk nothing would be to risk
+destruction and to incur the bitter reproach of having shipped "not to
+go aloft." Each man to his fellow on the yard was a shadow and a pale
+blot of a face; each voice was a windy whisper, a bellow blown down into
+silence. As the ship ran, and lifted, and pitched and trembled, her
+narrow wedge shape was a blot beneath us: on each side of her white foam
+marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in
+its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out
+upon my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand,
+and being the youngest waited for the word to "leech" it or "skin" it
+up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow
+fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside
+me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others I saw and heard
+not. The word came along the yard from the bunt to "leech" it up, and we
+leant over and caught the leech and pulled it on the yard. Now the fight
+began, but the beginning of it was easy sparring, and though the wind
+blew heavy, and each minute we had to remember death when she checked
+her roll with a jerk, the weather leech came up easy and we chuckled,
+each being glad. And in half an hour, or an hour, we were half masters
+of the wind, or as much of it as gave the sail life, after many small
+defeats. And then (whose fault of fingers for not being steel hooks, who
+shall say?) the wind, having got reinforcements, tore the victory from
+us and away went the sail once more free and thundering in the dark. The
+word was passed again, the indomitable word by the indomitable bo'sun at
+the bunt, this time to "skin" it up, and each man clawed out again at
+the flat booming canvas, clawed at it with his crooked fingers as
+wrestlers claw for hold behind each others' backs. A wrinkle gave hold,
+we nipped it, and then the ironic devil in the gale shrieked with
+laughter and snatched even so small an advantage from us. We knew the
+"old man" and the mate were cursing us down below. Did they curse us, or
+the weather, or the owners, or our English Agincourt trick once more?
+What did it matter to us, beaten and unbeaten, as we rested for a moment
+and then again stretched out bleeding fingers for some little advantage,
+knowing well that when such a gale blew victory was only possible when
+by constant trials the chance came of each being given good or fair
+handhold at once. Then came a shriek of wind and a blown-out lull and a
+wrinkle lapsed into a fold. We shouted "Now!" left hold of the
+jack-stay, and with feet outstretched grabbed slack canvas and hung on
+as another squall came singing like shrapnel across the peaks of the
+leaping sea. "Hold on now, hold on!" so sang all of us, and we cursed
+each other furiously. "Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it's lost
+again!" We cursed ourselves, felt our muscles crack, our nails shred,
+our skin peel and stretch and sting, and yet (thanks to our noble
+selves) we only lost an inch. Once more--"Now, now up, you dogs!" and
+that's the long-lost, long-waited, sudden, surprising clock of dawn
+yonder. We have been two hours here, and once more the sail leaps up and
+comes down. Here, two hours, two compressed swift hours, two compacted
+eternities measured in gasps and half the work is done unless we weaken
+and let up and let go.
+
+But that's the dawn!
+
+Morning and the glory of it, the grey wash of Eternity; sea-grey and
+world-grey and sky-grey, all in one great wash with a little whiteness
+standing for daylight. Beyond the illimitable wash where the sea breaks
+against the sky is the sun; source of all, strength of all. And there is
+no sleep to wash out of our eyes before we catch up strength from it,
+and encouragement. Lately we might have raised the Ajax cry, "In the
+light, in the light, destroy us," but now we see the little sea-plant of
+grey-green grow in the east, and we are strong. There is light, or a
+blight, a greyness out ahead and the deck whitens all awash, and the
+"old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the
+rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of
+following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses,
+and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once
+and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout
+geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a
+little, dived, scooped up seas and shook them off. And yet the topsail
+was not conquered.
+
+And now and once again the squalls howled, and we held on, gaining
+nothing, yet losing nothing. We were blind but obstinate; to have gained
+something when everything might be lost beneath us gave us grip and
+courage. Ah, and then, then the great chance came, and as the last great
+fold of white canvas rose up like a breaking wave we shouted, flung
+ourselves upon it, and as our bellies (lean by now) held the rest,
+smothered it and beat its last life out. The thing had been alive; the
+gods too had blown, and we had been all but dissipated, but now we were
+conquerors, and the gaskets bound our dead prey to the yard. And the
+morning was up, a wild and evil-minded waste it flowered in; the music
+of the storm shrieked like the Valkyries scurrying through grey space.
+But what cared we, since now she would carry or drag what sail remained,
+creaseless, resonant, wide-arched and wonderful. The light leapt from
+crest to crest, and a little pale yellow blossom of blown dawn peeped
+out of the grey. Like a touch of fire it reanimated our washed and
+reeling world; we laughed as we dropped down after our three hours'
+battle with the demons of the air. It was morning; there was coffee and
+tobacco; our souls were satisfied and satiated with rewarding toil; if
+Fate was kind there would be neither making nor shortening of sail till
+the next day. We touched the deck and ran for'ard laughing. We saluted
+the cook, blinking at the door of his galley. "Good-morning, doctor!"
+and it _was_ "good-morning!" for we were mostly young.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lofty sloping plains of Texas and Kansas the air is often keen at
+night, even in the summer time. And what it is in winter let train hands
+on the Texas Pacific declare. But in the warmer season, when northers
+have ceased to blow, it has an intoxicating, thrilling quality only
+comparable to the breath of the higher South African veldt. It is good
+to be alive then, and the glory of the morning is an excellent and
+moving glory since it wakes one to swift activity and the very joy of
+being. For long months I had worked upon a ranch in the Southern
+Panhandle, and now felt healthy energies stirring within me. In Western
+America the very blood of life is unrest; to remain is difficult; the
+difficulties of motion are its joys, though hardship and privation be
+the migrant's life for ever. For me the ever-present prairie grew a
+little dull; for sheep were sheep always, and there were mountains afar
+off and strange, bright rivers and the dark, odorous forests of the
+north. Though my boss was of the order that remains and accumulates
+wealth he understood when I declared that I must go or die. On the third
+day hereafter he and an old confederate "Colonel" (discharged as "Full
+Private" doubtless) and I and a Mexican sheep-herder moved southward
+towards the railroad. We travelled on horseback and in a two-mule buggy,
+and with the movement discontent dropped away from me and all was well
+with the world, even though I knew not what weeks or even days should
+bring me. That night we camped thirty miles from the ranch and thirty
+from the little town we called a city, which had grown up in the
+sand-dunes by the banks of the Texan Colorado. We lighted our scanty
+fire at sundown. It was a typical camp of the later days upon the high
+prairie, and a not untypical set of men. Our talk was of horses and
+steers and sheep and of Virginia, whence our grizzled colonel came, and
+the Mexican sat and smoked and said nothing, save with his beady,
+brilliant eyes, as he made his yellow papers into flat _cigaritas_. And
+at nine o'clock silence and sleep fell upon us while the mules and
+horses champed their dry fare beside the buggy. For me the sleep of the
+just was my due, for I had worked hard that day. Yet I woke suddenly
+before the dawn, and woke all at once, refreshed and alive. It was still
+dark and yet I knew it was not properly night, for the time sense in me,
+measured healthily by refreshment, told me of the passage of time, and I
+arose from my blankets. As I walked out among the shadows softly my
+companions made no motion, and the horses whinnied coaxingly, as though
+I were still the guardian of their provender. The wind was cool, even
+cold, as it blew from the north, and on every side the vast prairie
+stretched like a mysterious dark green sea, with here and there a shadow
+heaving itself out of the infinite level. I walked lightly with a happy
+sense of detachment and well-being, almost with the feeling of a quiet
+resurrection.
+
+Elsewhere and in cities one awakes reluctantly; the trumpet of the Angel
+of the Day is heard with deaf ears; but here in the keen coolness, the
+vast greenness, the infinite interspace of prairie betwixt city and
+city, I was awake and keen and cool as dewy grass, and as peaceful as
+the stars even before the Day blew her horn upon the verge of a far
+horizon. This was summer, but it was not dawn yet; the year was young
+even in August because this was night; and I was part of the hour and
+the year. It was well with the world and well with me as I left the camp
+and marched snuffing the air like an antelope and with as keen a joy.
+And as I walked I was aware again that it was not night, for there was a
+Day-spring in the East, a pale glow like a whitish mirage, and star by
+star the night departed, till I stayed and looked back to the west and
+saw the silent waggon under which my sleeping comrade still lay
+unconscious of the hour. And slowly, very slowly the Glory of the
+Morning broke out of bondage and covered the glory of the night until
+the pallor of the new-born day was fine pale gold, and the gold was
+under-edged with rose, and the rose grew insistently and shot upward
+like a great corona upon the eclipsing earth. And as I stood, balancing
+lightly upon my light feet, bathed with dew, I moved my lips and greeted
+Day without conscious words, being even as my own ancestor, who perhaps
+had no words of greeting. And so upon that solitude the day was born
+like a new miracle with only one visible worshipper, and the sun rose up
+like a star and was then a convexed line of fire, and presently it ate a
+little into the prairie; and the world was light and rose and green and
+very near me, so that I sighed a little and then walked back briskly to
+the camp and raised a loud shout, not to the sun, but to my fellow-men.
+For the Glory had departed and there was the work of the day to be done.
+
+
+THE END
+
+_Colston & Coy. Limited, Printers, Edinburgh._
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