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.