fields and the endless blue lake seemed a symbol of the unrealisability
of the ideal. With both I was enamoured, and with the beauty of both I
craved in some dim and unknown way to take my fill of delight: both were
at my feet, but both stretched away and away until they met the eternal
and unapproachable heavens at the horizon. Yes, the fields were green,
but not the spot on which I stood; the water was blue, but not in the
cup with which I tried to assuage my thirst.--But there is a limit to
ontological and psychological speculations of sombre hue.
XX
The Walking Tour
§ 43
Up to the present we have considered the country walk only. The walking
trip or tour is a more serious affair. If it requires as vacuous a frame
of mind, it necessitates a more deliberate preparation. Much depends
upon the country and the locality chosen. If inviting hostelries abound,
one needs to weight oneself with little; if they are infrequent, or
nonexistent, food and clothing become matters of moment. This may sound
a truism; but it is a truism that many a tripper wishes he had laid more
earnestly to heart when, miles from house and home, he finds himself
wet, hungry, and fatigued. It is better to carry a few extra pounds far
than to run short soon; for a worn-out body means a useless mind, and
hunger and cold, with their attendant depression of spirits, not only
rob the tour of its pleasure, but rob the tourist of his zest.
Start, therefore, comfortable, and comfortably provided. This is not
Sybaritism; it is common-sense.
For an extended trip, send on some luggage ahead, if you can; and some
money (I speak of civilised regions). It is impossible, if you are
alone--unless, like Stevenson, you hire a donkey--to transport on your
own back food and clothing to keep you going for more than a few days
at a stretch--unless you shoot, or fish, or trap--which is sport or
prospecting, not walking.
Your first care should be for your feet--another truism not seldom
neglected. See that your boots fit--_fit_, remembering that the feet
swell (I speak to tenderfoots).
If you are unaccustomed to walking, a good plan is to start with an
extra pair of leather soles inside your boots. These can be taken out
when the feet swell.
If you prefer shoes to boots, wear gaiters or putties--to keep out the
wet in winter, to keep out the dust in summer. The only occasion upon
which I suffered from blisters was on a sixty-mile walk in tennis shoes
on a dusty road in August. Take two or three changes of socks. If you
walk in a populous region, carry a pair of light shoes. These will come
in handy if you run across a friend who asks you to dinner. Carry also
a collar or two; not only hosts and hostesses, but landlords and
landladies look askance at too trampish an appearance. I once felt
rather uncomfortable sitting at the head of a table d'hôte at the
excellent Hôtel Kaltenbach on the American side at Niagara (the
landlord knew me well), for I was in rough flannels and tweeds, and
my fellow-guests were dressed like (and some of them probably were)
millionaires and millionairesses. _Verbum sapientibus satis._--Do not
refuse an invitation to dinner. Follow Napoleon's advice and let
the country you pass through support you, falling back upon your own
food-supply when necessary. Help yourself to as much fruit as you can,
or as the owners thereof and their dogs permit. A too concentrated diet
is unwholesome. Expatiate upon this to the owners of orchards, and--back
your theories with a dole.
§ 44
But nothing equals the evening meal cooked over your own fire--if you
are not too tired to cook it. Of the cookery I shall speak later;
but the fire is as invigorating as the food. Would you taste the
consummation of human masculine contentment, stretch your tired legs
before your own fire after a long, long walk followed by a full meal:
your chamber, the forest primæval, green, indistinct in the twilight;
your couch, the scented earth; your canopy, the heavens, curtained with
clouds; in your nostrils the incense of burning wood; in your heart the
peace which the world giveth not.--The elaborately ornamented modern
hearth, with its carved oak or its sculptured marble, is the direct
lineal descendant of the nomad fire--the earliest institution of man,
the first promoter of civilisation, the binder-together of troglodytic
families into tribes. "Hearth and Home" is an ancient, a very ancient,
sentiment. It dates back, I take it, to the Glacial Epoch--far enough,
in all conscience.--In my mind's eye I see the shivering Cave-man,
appalled at the encroaching ice, the deepening cold. He gathers wood,
huddles him in caves, the drops from his furry, ill-smelling
clothing (there was no tanning then) sputtering in the flames. For
self-protection, and from lack of fuel, family makes alliance with
family, and the first-formed human community squats silent about
the first-formed human hearth. What friendships must have there been
cemented, what tales told; what a strange first unburthening of human
heart to human heart! What ecstatic love-making, too, must have been
enacted in the darksome corners of the sooty cave, the while the grey
gorged hunters snored, and toothless beldames gesticulated dumb-crambo
scandal by the smouldering brands!--No wonder præhistoric associations
cluster even now about what is too often represented by a flamboyant
mantelpiece with immaculate tiles and polished brasses. _Pro Aris et
Focis!_ The smoking altar is the consecrated symbol of the lowly hearth.
XXI
The Tramp's Dietary
§ 45
As to food--bacon, flour, and beans are the stand-by. The curious in
the matter of concentrated and portable foods will do well to consult
Nansen's elaborate and carefully calculated lists of these.[23] Carry
some chocolate: it staves off hunger and is nourishing. Milk, if you
can get it, has wonderful staying powers, and by most people--especially
under stress of prolonged exertion--is easily digested. Wear wool next
the skin, and wear it loose. Let everything be loose. And see that
your tailor puts pockets--deep and wide ones--in every conceivable and
inconceivable part of your costume. As to books, sketching or writing
materials, or a camera--every tramp has his hobby: indulge yours to
the full; what are you walking for if not to enjoy life? Lastly, do not
forget that, if you are not far from the haunts of men, you will over
and over again be indebted to your fellow-men for little kindnesses and
civilities. A pocketful of small change will make many a rough place
smooth. I might mention also _sotto voce_ that so will a flask of good
whisky. To these you may add a couple of bandages, some chlorodyne, a
few ounces of cognac, a small styptic, a needle and some thread, a small
razor, and a cake of soap. Also, if you wear an eye-glass or glasses,
by no means forget to carry some extra ones. As for the rest, a pipe,
a very big pouch of tobacco (many will dip into it), a stout stick, and
abundance of matches ought to make you independent of everything and
everybody for days together.
§ 46
A word, too, on beverages, which are as important as is food.--Eschew
alcohol in every shape or form, unless you are dog-tired at the end of a
long day and must make a few miles ere nightfall. Alcoholic stimulation
spells ruination to muscular exertion the moment the stimulus has passed
off. It was said that on the march to the relief of Ladysmith in the
South African War the drinkers could be told as plainly as if they had
been labelled.
The best example I know of the wise and efficacious use of alcohol is in
Edith Elmer Wood's "An Oberland Chalet." The author, her sister-in-law,
and her brother, with a guide, were climbing the Strahlegg Pass.
"All the way up that eight hundred
feet of rock wall, there was never a ledge large enough to rest on
with the entire two feet at once!... The numbness of my hands was so
great that my control over them was most uncertain. My life and
that of my companions depended on the grip I should keep with those
cramped, aching fingers, but though I concentrated my will power on
them I felt no certainty that the next minute they would not become
rigid and refuse to obey me.... After the first few minutes, I never
looked downward. I was not inclined to dizziness, but the drop was
too appalling.... Once we got all four on a little ledge not as
wide as the length of our feet, but solid enough to stand on
without balancing. We paused there to take breath, and somebody said
'Cognac.' Now our experience in the Alpine hut the night before had
nearly made teetotalers of us. But at this moment we decided that
stimulants might have a legitimate use. Frater produced his silver
pocket flask and handed it round. We took a swallow in turn, and it
was like liquid life running down our throats. I never experienced
anything so magical.... I was at the very last point of endurance.
I had lost faith in ever reaching the summit of the cliff. I had no
more physical force with which to lift my sagging weight upward. I
had lost the will power that lashes on an exhausted body. My numb
hands were stiffening. My lungs were choked and labouring. I
could neither go on nor go back. Then those two teaspoonfuls, or
thereabouts, of fiery cognac that burned down my throat sufficed
to give me back my grip on myself, physical and mental. I moved my
cramped fingers and they answered. I took a deep long breath and
felt strengthened. A hope, almost a confidence, crept into
my heart that we might reach the top alive."[24]
§ 47
The best all-round stimulant is tea. I say it advisedly, knowing full
well that to Dr Alexander Haig and the anti-uric-acid dietists tea
is Anathema Maranatha. But every mining prospector, every railroad
constructor, every lumberman, every out-in-the-wilds worker throughout
Australia and America drinks tea--proof, surely, that it is efficacious,
even if it be in a sense deleterious. In huge quantities, and constantly
taken, I dare say it is deleterious. But personally I know of no
pick-me-up preferable to tea, when, cold, hungry, and tired at the end
of a long day's tramp, you find yourself "all in" and unable to eat.
I recall an instance of the extraordinary efficacy of tea--quite weak,
but hot. It was at the end of a forty-mile walk through a monotonous
country in cold, wind, and rain. We arrived tired out; and although we
knew we were hungry (for we had had precious little to eat all day),
the thought of food was repulsive, though the restaurant we had reached
displayed a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea in the biggest teapot
procurable. It was brought. We sipped I forget how many cups each. Then
we supped indeed; and after supper one of the party proposed to walk the
forty miles back!
* * * * *
Perhaps Dr Haig will say that plain hot water would have done just as
well. Humph! Give me weak, but good, tea.
Hot milk, of course, is an incomparable pick-me-up. But who, on a
trudge, can always, by demanding it, obtain hot milk? If you can get it,
milk, in any shape or form, is unrivalled. More than once it has raised
me from the depths of low spirits, produced by hunger and thirst and
fatigue, to the most contented of moods.--I was walking once on a hot
summer's day along a barren and dusty road where was no habitation nor
signs of men. My knapsack was empty, so was my water-bottle. Not a brook
or a stream could I find. It was late in the day. I was heart-sick and
weary. But the miracle happened. Did I believe my eyes, or was that a
man there milking cows over yonder in that field? I made straight for
him, and, after passing the time of day and being generally polite (the
while my tongue clave to my palate), I presently asked if I might have
some of his priceless liquid--I called it simply "milk." Genially he
pointed to a pail--_a pail_, and bade me help myself. I put that vessel
to my lips, and I rather think that the vertical arc described by any
given point on the periphery of the bottom of that utensil during the
process of deglutition was not a small one! When I put that pail down
(and a twenty-five-cent piece beside it) I was a new man, and laughed at
miles and melancholy.
* * * * *
Very often, when walking, especially in hot weather, one finds oneself
tired when only a few miles have been covered. It is not real fatigue;
it is want of fluid. The skin exudes moisture; the blood thickens; the
serums and synovial fluids run short; waste matter is not excreted; the
muscles and tendons require lubrication. A copious draught of water will
put all to rights. Not everyone knows this. I myself owe the hint to a
friend.[25]
§ 48
Each walker must, however, discover for himself what is the food best
suited to his needs--remembering always that it is quite possible to
spoil a whole day by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you walk to see
and to enjoy, unless you possess that youth which can digest anything,
and that vitality which can attack anything, take heed as to what you
eat and what you attempt.--Most unfortunate is the remembrance of an
otherwise lovely walk I took one day over one of the most lovely of
the passes of the Jura. The day was superb; the road by the soft green
pastures was superb; and superb was the climb through the tangled
brushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds formed themselves to leeward of
the peaks and hid the tops of the pines; above, I gazed into a deep blue
sky; beneath, I gazed into a deep green vale; and a tumbling brook sent
its music up the heights. But--I had started foodless, and had stuffed
into my pockets only a stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By noon I was
hungry. I finished the roll _and_ the sardines. With deplorable result.
The pancreas rebelled, the senses were dulled, and all the beauties of
the Jura were lost upon _heu me miserum_!--Fellow-tramp, take thought
for your provender--and "provender" good old Dr Johnson defines as "dry
food for brutes."--_That_ is the diet to walk on.
§ 49
But, after all, one's impedimenta must be chosen according to one's
tastes. Mr Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his seven-hundred-mile
walk from Toul to Rome with "a large piece of bread, half-a-pound of
smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the
wine of Brulé"[26] (but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable
deal of sack!); though farther on he tells us he also carried "a needle,
some thread, and a flute."[27] But then Mr Belloc's path lay through
thickly-peopled districts; he rarely slept in the open; travelled
in summer-time; and not once, I think, lighted a fire: and certes he
reached Rome in sorry plight.
XXII
Practical Details
§ 50
And now for some hints on the practical details of walking tours of more
arduous character and more extended length.[28]--Suit the weight of your
knapsack or pack to your strength, leaving a large margin for comfort.
If you travel in regions uninhabited by man, and the climate is
rigorous, a shelter at night is all-important. Therefore carry a light
blanket: a warm head and face induce sleep; so does a change to dry
underclothing at the end of the day. For really hard trips, when you
walk all day and walk far, you will need, to replace used-up muscular
tissue, each day:
3/4 lb. of flour;
3/4 lb. of bacon;
1/2 lb. of beans;
--and to these you should add dried fruit or rice. The best dried fruit
is a mixture in equal parts of apricots and prunes. Take an abundance
of tea: nothing takes the place of tea; and supply yourself with pepper,
salt, sugar, candles, and soap. Your cooking pots should fit the one
into the other. These things, with a small frying-pan, an axe (to
cut poles for your evening shelter and wood for your fire), a file to
sharpen this, and some stout wire hooks by which to hang your pots over
the fire, complete, I think, the sum-total of your absolutely necessary
impedimenta.
§ 51
The sedulous, however sage, have little idea how large a part of active
life depends on food. To stay-at-homes, who go down to the dining-room
when the gong sounds, a meal seems a mere incident of life, an
intermission from work, an opportunity for a family chat. The traveller
on foot soon learns that a meal is of the most vital importance. Every
reader of Nansen's thrilling narrative must have noticed this. Even in
Mr Belloc's literary "Path to Rome" one is struck with the intrusion of
this unliterary topic, and the more literary "Inland Voyage" of Robert
Louis Stevenson is not free from it. While even in that delightful, and
delightfully feminine, "An Oberland Chalet," which I have already cited,
although the foods were generally cheese or cakes or _petits pains_, and
the drinks chocolate or milk or _café au lait_, the mention of edibles
and potables is frequent.
The importance of a supply of food has so often been borne in upon me
that I am inclined to believe that the political community is coæval
with the pantry. Even amongst animals, only those form commonwealths
which form common stores of food--as the ant and the bee.
The pedestrian gains a practical insight into this wide-reaching
influence of a storage of food. Not for half-a-dozen hours can he
subsist before its importance is impressed upon him by most painful
pangs. If, therefore, sedulous sage, you set out on a long hard walk
without due provision for the allaying of hunger, you will come to
grief. I make no apologies, accordingly, for minute instructions on that
topic here.
§ 52
The bread of the Western prospector, my fraternal informant tells me, is
the bannock. Dost know how to make a bannock? You must have with you
a bag containing flour (of the highest grade, made from hard wheat),
baking powder, and salt, thoroughly mixed beforehand. (Use twice as much
baking powder as the instructions on the tin direct. Half a cupful of
salt will suffice for ten pounds of flour.) Open this bag, and make a
depression in the contents with your fist. Into this pour a cupful of
water. Stir the sides of the depression into the water till you get a
stiff dough. Spread this dough in a clean greased frying-pan. Hold the
pan over the fire till the under side of the dough is slightly browned,
then take the pan off the fire and set it up on edge to allow the top of
the bannock to toast, and your bannock is made--and very delicious you
will find it if you are hungry, and hungry you certainly will be.
Beans are a more troublesome affair, for, unfortunately, they take from
two to four hours to boil. But beans are the mainstay of life on a tour.
There are two good varieties: the small white, and the larger brown.
Take both, and before starting clean them thoroughly from dust and grit
and stones--thoroughly. As soon as your fire is lighted, put on your
beans in cold water with no salt, and keep them boiling. As soon as they
show signs of softening, add a piece of bacon or a ham bone and some
pepper and salt. When ready--eat. If they are not ready for you when you
are ready for them (and this coincidence is, alas, rare with beans), the
pot should be filled up with water, the remains of the fire raked into
a circle, in the centre of which the pot should be kept for the night:
they will then make a dish for breakfast, when they may be eaten as they
are, or can be fried. If drained fairly dry, they may be carried as they
are and used for luncheon.--But the best thing is to make a bannock of
them. Take a clean frying-pan with plenty of bacon fat in it, and mash
the already boiled beans in this with a fork. Heat, with stirring, till
the mass is dry enough to set; then fry on both sides. This will keep
for days, "and is," says my authority, "the finest food I know of for
emergency trips."
XXIII
The Beauty of Landscape
§ 53
May I here request the reader to accompany me in a short
digression?--Few things are pleasanter than a walk in which one turns
down any lane that invites.
One of the first delights of walking is the pleasure derived from
the passing scene.--What is the secret of the pleasure derived from a
beautiful landscape--or, as a matter of fact, from almost any landscape?
For apparently a landscape need not be actually beautiful in order to
give pleasure. "I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras," says
Bret Harte, "with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness,
for 100,000 kilomètres of the picturesque Vaud."[29] And even Mary
MacLane, rail as she did at the barren sands of Butte, Montana, in her
"Story,"[30] when she left them wrote, "I love those things the best of
all."[31]--Bret Harte and Mary MacLane may give us a clue to the secret.
It is not merely the contour or the colours of a landscape that delight;
it is the associations that cling to it.--But what of a scene which
is quite new to the eyes? Still, I think, association. "Scenery soon
palls," says George Borrow, "unless it is associated with remarkable
events, and the names of remarkable men."[32] And Ruskin, you will
remember, when gazing at the broken masses of pine forest which skirt
the course of the Ain above the village of Champignole, in the Jura,
found that the impressiveness of the scene owed its source to the fact
that "those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been
dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue."[33]
Packed away in the brain and mind of man must be subtle and secret
memories dating back through unknown ages of time.--A gaseous theory,
perhaps, but one which Senancour has liquefied into the pellucid
sentence:--"La nature sentie n'est que dans les rapports humains, et
l'éloquence des choses n'est rien que l'éloquence de l'homme."[34] The
great fight for life, the stern joys of life--the ferocious combat, the
thrilling love match, the myriad sensations and emotions evoked by man's
physical environment, and his struggle for existence therein--surely
these live somehow somewhere packed away in his brain to-day--just as
some migratory and nidificatory memories must be packed away in the
brain of a bird. It is these dormant cosmic memories that a landscape
revives. On how many a plain to-day does there not flow veritable human
blood remuted into sap!--Terrene Nature was man's ancestral home and no
man can gaze upon it unmoved.
§ 54
The freedom of a great expanse seems to arouse primitive instincts.
Idylls are not enacted in drawing-rooms. It is the odorous glades are
Hymen's haunts. In the meads of Enna Proserpine was wooed. Zephir won
Aurora a-maying. On Latmos top Endymion was nightly kissed. In the
boscage Daphnis proposed--and was there and then accepted.[35] If only
Fashion would decree that honeymoons should be spent under Jove! Lovers
ken the banks where amaranths blow, and poets build their altars in the
fields. How actually physically exhilarating sometimes is
"The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
. . . . . .
Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way."[36]
There must survive in the cosmic consciousness of the race, deep-seated
and ineradicable memories of primæval nuptials. What a pity it is that
that supreme, that sacred drama called "Love" should be enacted by
youths and damsels, not in secluded groves amidst perfumed and amorous
blooms, but in ball-rooms and boudoirs.[37]
§ 55
It is a complex, it is a profound enigma, this of the appeal of the
beauty of nature to the senses and emotions of man. For Beauty, we must
remember, is not an attribute of the external thing. Beauty is in the
soul that feels, the mind that thinks, the memory that remembers. _That_
is beautiful which brings to mind and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill,
exalted feeling. _That_ is beautiful which makes for the preservation
and propagation and (which should make for the) elevation of the
race.--And this is why Beauty is of various kinds. There is a Beauty of
the senses, and there is a beauty of the soul--as there is a terrestrial
Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian.[38] Though why the earthly and the
heavenly Aphrodites should not join hands, I do not know. Perhaps it is
only when they do join hands--when there is at one and the same time
a spiritual obsession and a physical oblation--that Beauty becomes
transfigured before us, reveals her divine nature radiant through
fleshly vestments. Ah! this occurs only when we are on the Mount.
§ 56