23 chapters
15 hour read
Selected Chapters
23 chapters
A FOREWORD OF EXPLANATION
A FOREWORD OF EXPLANATION
Some years ago, while still an undergraduate, I chanced to be present at an informal gathering in which the conversation turned to confessions of respective aspirations. “If only I had a few thousands,” sighed a senior, “I’d make a trip around the world.” “Modest ambition!” retorted a junior, “But you’d better file it away for future reference, till you have made the money.” “With all due respect to bank accounts,” I observed, “I believe a man with a bit of energy and good health could start wit
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY RAMBLES
CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY RAMBLES
On the eighteenth day of June, 1904, I boarded the ferry that plies between Detroit and the Canadian shore, and, coasting the sloping beach of verdant Belle Isle, swung off on the first stage of my journey around the globe. At the landing stage a custom officer glanced through my bag, stared perplexedly from the kodak to my laborer’s garb, and with a shrug of his shoulders passed me on into the streets of the Canadian village. A two-mile tramp brought me to the Walkerville cattle-barns, where th
45 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II ON THE ROAD IN FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND
CHAPTER II ON THE ROAD IN FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND
The month of August was drawing to a close when I swung my wardrobe of the city over a shoulder and, wandering down the Boulevard St. Germain, struck off to the southward. A succession of noisy, squalid villages, such as surround most cities of the old world, lined the way to Mélun. Beyond, tramping was more pleasant, for the route swung off across a rolling country, unadorned with squalling urchins and mongrel curs, towards Fontainebleau. The foot-traveler in France need have no fear of losing
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III TRAMPING IN ITALY
CHAPTER III TRAMPING IN ITALY
There was next morning nothing to recall the dismal weather of the day before except the deep mud of the highway and my garments, still dripping wet when I drew them on. The vine-covered hillsides and rolling plains below, the lizards basking on every rock and ledge, peasant women plodding barefooted along the route gave to the land an aspect far different from that of the valley of the Rhône. It was hard to realize that the open fields and chilling night winds of Switzerland were not hundreds o
41 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV THE BORDERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
CHAPTER IV THE BORDERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
There are few stretches of roadway in Italy that wind through finer scenery than that panorama which spreads out along the highway between Florence and Siena. The pedestrian, however, finds small opportunity to contemplate the landscape, for his progress is beset with strange perils. Each peasant of this section possesses a yoke of white oxen, a bovine type indigenous to the Apennine region, the distinguishing feature of which is the length of the horns, measuring often six and even seven feet f
38 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V A “BEACHCOMBER” IN MARSEILLES
CHAPTER V A “BEACHCOMBER” IN MARSEILLES
It was well for my immediate peace of mind that no prophet accosted me on my way down to the harbor next morning, to foretell the hungry days that were to be my portion in Marseilles. One of the strikes that periodically tie up the seaport of southern France was at its height. Dozens of sailing vessels rode at anchor in the little “Old Harbor”; the râde behind the great V-shaped breakwater was crowded with shipping; at the wharves were moored long rows of ocean-liners, among which the white, cli
41 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI THE ARAB WORLD
CHAPTER VI THE ARAB WORLD
On a placid sea the Warwickshire sped eastward, sighting the mountain ranges of Corsica and Sardinia, and sweeping through the straits of Messina so close to the Sicilian shore that we could make out plainly, from the deck, the evening strollers on the brightly-lighted promenade. The crew was East Indian. The white quartermasters with whom I messed were gorged with such food as only a French chef can cook, and valiantly I struggled to make up for those famished days in the dismal streets of Mars
49 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII THE CITIES OF OLD
CHAPTER VII THE CITIES OF OLD
More successfully than all other cities of its age and fame, Damascus has repulsed the advance of Western civilization and invention. To be sure, the whistle of the locomotive is heard now in her suburbs; for besides the railway to the coast, a new line brings to the ancient city the produce of the vast and fertile Hauran beyond Jordan. A few single telegraph wires, too, connect “Shaam” with the outside world, and the whir of the American sewing machine is heard in her long, vaulted bazaars. But
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII THE WILDS OF PALESTINE
CHAPTER VIII THE WILDS OF PALESTINE
The sun, rising red and clear next morning, put to rout even the protests of Nehmé and Shukry against my departure on Sunday. Elias sorrowfully said farewell at the mission gate. The teachers, carrying between them a package at which they cast mysterious glances now and then, conducted me to the foot of the Nazarene range. Pointing out a guiding mountain peak that rose above Gineen, far across the trackless plain of Esdraelon, they bade me good-by almost tearfully, thrust the package into my han
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX THE LOAFER’S PARADISE
CHAPTER IX THE LOAFER’S PARADISE
He who travels à force de bras may regulate his sight-seeing as exactly as the moneyed tourist by clinging to one fixed plan—to fall penniless and be forced to seek employment only in those cities with which he would become well acquainted. In all north Africa no spot offered more attractions for an extended stay than Cairo. Once arrived there, whatever the fates had in store for me, I should be on chosen ground. At all hazards I must reach Cairo before I “went broke.” On my second morning in Al
34 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X THE LAND OF THE NILE
CHAPTER X THE LAND OF THE NILE
One fine morning, some two weeks after my introduction to Tom, I vacated my post in the consul’s household and set about laying plans for a journey up the Nile. My wages had not been reckoned on the American scale, but for all that I was a man of comparative affluence when I turned off the Moosky for my last visit to the headquarters of “the union.” The German is nothing if not systematic, be he prime minister or errant adventurer. The Teutonic tramp does not wander at random through lands of wh
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI STEALING A MARCH ON THE FAR EAST
CHAPTER XI STEALING A MARCH ON THE FAR EAST
As the American “hobo” studies the folders of the railway lines, so the vagrant beyond seas scans the posters of the steamship companies. Few were the ships plying to the Far East whose movements I had not followed during that Cairene month of February. On the journey from Ismaïlia to the coast we passed four leviathans, gliding southward through the canal so close that we could read from the windows of the train the books in the hands of the passengers under the awnings. The names on every bow
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII THE REALMS OF GAUTAMA
CHAPTER XII THE REALMS OF GAUTAMA
Difficult, indeed, would it be to choose a more striking introduction to the wonderland of the Far East than that egg-shaped remnant left over from the building of India. How incomplete and lusterless seems the picture drawn by the anticipating imagination when one stands at last in the midst of its prolific, kaleidoscopic life! Sharp and vivid are the impressions that come crowding on the traveler in jumbled, disordered succession, and he experiences a confusion such as comes with the first gla
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII SAWDUST AND TINSEL IN THE ORIENT
CHAPTER XIII SAWDUST AND TINSEL IN THE ORIENT
The train rumbled into Colombo in the late afternoon. I made my way at once through the pattering throng to Almeida’s. In the roofless dining-room sat Askins, puffing furiously at his clay pipe and scribbling with a sputtering pen in one of several half-penny notebooks scattered on the table before him. At the further end lolled the Swede and two fellow-beachcombers, staring at the writer as at the performer of some mighty miracle. “Doing?” grinned the Irishman, in answer to my question. “Oh! Ju
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV THREE HOBOES IN INDIA
CHAPTER XIV THREE HOBOES IN INDIA
The departure of Ole for home as a consul passenger, closely followed by that of Askins for India, “ere his elusive chips made their escape,” left me the oldest “comber” on the beach. That honor might quickly have fallen to the next of heir but for the pleading of a fellow-countryman; for the merry circus days had left me a fortune that would carry me far afield in the vast peninsula to the north. Marten of Tacoma, tally clerk of the British Steam Navigation Company, promised to secure me a plac
38 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV THE WAYS OF THE HINDU
CHAPTER XV THE WAYS OF THE HINDU
It was my good fortune to find employment the next morning. The job was suggestive of the spy and the tattle-tale, but the most indolent of vagabonds could not have dreamed of a more ideal means of amassing a fortune. I had merely to sit still and do nothing—and draw three rupees a day for doing it. Almost the only condition imposed upon me was that the sitting must be done on a street car. Let me explain. The electric tramways of the city of Madras are numerous and well-patronized. The company
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI THE HEART OF INDIA
CHAPTER XVI THE HEART OF INDIA
Late that afternoon we were reunited at the Sailors’ Home. As time wore on the conviction grew that we must shake off Haywood once for all. Go where we would, he was ever at our heels, bringing disgrace upon us. Picking pockets was his glee. When other excitement failed he turned to filching small articles from the booths along the way. The last straw was added to our burden as we were returning to the Home along the Strand on our second day in Calcutta. The sophisticated inhabitants of the metr
39 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII BEYOND THE GANGES
CHAPTER XVII BEYOND THE GANGES
Two hours after my arrival in Calcutta there entered the American consulate, high up above the Maidan, a white man who should have won the sympathy even of the hard-hearted manager who had denied him admittance to the Sailors’ Home for once having deserted that institution for a trip “up-country.” He was the possessor of a single rupee. His cotton garments, thanks to dhobies, Ganges mud, and forty-two hundred miles of third-class travel, were threadbare rags through which the tropical sun had re
45 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII THE LAND OF PAGODAS
CHAPTER XVIII THE LAND OF PAGODAS
Somewhat back from the wharves, yet within earshot of the cadenced song of stevedores and coal-heavers, stand two shaded bungalows, well-known among the inhabitants of the metropolis of Burma. The larger is the Sailors’ Home, the less important the Seamen’s Mission. Rangoon, it transpired, was suffering a double visitation of beachcombers and the plague. The protest of the managers of both mariners’ institutions, that they were already “full up with dead ones,” gave us small grief. For were we n
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX ON FOOT ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA
CHAPTER XIX ON FOOT ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA
“Now lads,” said our host, as we were finishing a late breakfast the next morning, “I’ll ’ave to ask you to move on. If I was fixed right you’d be welcome to ’ang out ’ere as long as you’re in town, but I don’t draw no viceroy’s salary an’ I’ve got a fair size family to support. Up on the ’ill there, lives an American Christer. Go up an’ give ’im your yarn an’ touch ’im fer a few dibs.” We did not, of course, take the advice of the Englishman. James and I were agreed that it would not be consist
46 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX THE JUNGLES OF SIAM
CHAPTER XX THE JUNGLES OF SIAM
The route to Bangkok, such as it was, lay on the eastern bank of the Menam. This time we crossed the stream by the official ferry, a dug-out canoe fully thirty feet long, which held, besides ourselves and four paddlers, twenty-two natives, chiefly of the gentle sex. All day we tramped through jungle as wild as that to the westward, following the course of the river. Bamboo villages were numerous and for every hut at least a half-dozen, mangy, yellow curs added their yelping to the uproar that he
35 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI WANDERING IN JAPAN
CHAPTER XXI WANDERING IN JAPAN
“Set me down at the Sailors’ Home,” I ordered, stepping into the first ’rickshah to reach me. “No good,” answered the runner, dropping the shafts. “Sailor Home he close.” “We’ll go and see,” I replied, knowing the ways of ’rickshah-men. But the Home was unoccupied, sure enough, and its windows boarded up. The runner assumed the attitude of a man who had been insulted without reason. “Me know ver’ fine hotel,” he said, haughtily, “Many white sailor man stop. Me takee there. Ver’ fine.” I acquiesc
38 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII HOMEWARD BOUND
CHAPTER XXII HOMEWARD BOUND
There was preaching and singing in the Sailors’ Home of Yokohama on the evening of my arrival. The white-bearded missionary styled the service a “mass meeting for Christ.” The beachcombers in attendance were not those to cavil at names. So long as they were permitted to doze away the evening in comfortable chairs, “holy Joe” might assign any reason he chose for their presence, though there were those near me at the back of the room who grumbled now and then at the monotonous voice that disturbed
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter