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."