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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.