30 chapters
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30 chapters
A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO
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
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SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES
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
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A PONDICHERRY BOY
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
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A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS
A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS
The travel-micrococcus infected me early. Before I can remember I travelled in England, and, when my memory begins, a stay of two years in any town made me weary. My brothers and sisters and I would then inquire what time the authorities meant to send my father elsewhere, and we were accustomed to denounce any delay on the part of a certain Government department in giving us "the route." Such a youth was gipsying, and if any original fever of the blood led to wandering, such a training heightene
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MY FRIEND EL TORO
MY FRIEND EL TORO
It is not everyone who can make friends with a bull, and it is not every bull that one can make friends with. Yet next to one or two horses, about which I could spin long yarns, El Toro, the big brindled bull of Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, is certainly nearest my heart. He was my friend, and sometimes my companion; he had a noble character for fighting, and in spite of his pugnacity he was amiability itself to most human beings. His final end, too, fills me with a sense of pat
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BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST
BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST
Since taking to writing as a profession I have lost most of the interest I had in literature as literature pure and simple. That interest gradually faded and "Art for Art's sake," in the sense the simple in studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is nothing, what the
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A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON
A VISIT TO R. L. STEVENSON
It was late in May or early in June, for I cannot now remember the exact date, that I landed in Apia, in the island of Upolu. Naturally enough that island was not to me so much the centre of Anglo-American and German rivalries as the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, then become the literary deity of the Pacific. In a dozen shops in Honolulu I had seen little plaster busts of him; here and there I came across his photograph. And I had a theory about him to put to the test. Though I was not, and am
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A DAY IN CAPETOWN
A DAY IN CAPETOWN
I went across the Parade, which every morning is full of cheap-jack auctioneers selling all things under the sun to Kaffirs, Malays, coolies, towards Rondebosch and Wynberg. At the Castle the electric tram passed me, and I jumped on board and went, at the least, as fast as an English slow train. The wind was blowing and the dust flew, but ahead of us ran a huge electricity-driven water-cart, a very water tram, which laid the red clouds for us. Yet in London we travel painfully in omnibuses and h
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VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE
VELDT, PLAIN AND PRAIRIE
Among the problems which remain perpetually interesting are those which deal with the influence of environment on races, and that of races on environment. What happens when the people are plastic and their circumstances rigid? What when the people are rigid and unyielding, and their surroundings fluent and unabiding? And does character depend on what is outside, or does the dominant quality of a race remain, as some vainly think, for ever? These are puzzling questions, but not entirely beyond co
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NEAR MAFEKING
NEAR MAFEKING
To a man who has lived and travelled in the United States of America and the not yet United States of Australia, there is one characteristic of South Africa which is particularly noticeable. It is its oneness as a country. And this oneness is all the more remarkable when we take into consideration its racial and political divisions. A bird's-eye view of America is beyond one; a similar glance at the seaboard of Australia from Rockhampton even round to Albany (which is then only round half its ci
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OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
OLD AND NEW DAYS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
The whole of this vast country—this sea of mountains, as it has very appropriately been called—used practically to belong to the Hudson's Bay Trading Company, and they made more than enough money out of it and its inhabitants. The Indians, though never quite to be trusted, were, and are, not so warlike as their neighbours far to the south of the forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the trading por
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A TALK WITH KRUGER
A TALK WITH KRUGER
It was a warm day in the end of September 1898 when I put my foot in Pretoria. There was an air of lassitude about the town. President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, had been and gone, and the triumphal arch still cried "Wilkom" across Church Square. The two Boer States had ratified their secret understanding, and many Boers looked on the arch as a prophecy of victory. Perhaps by now those who were accustomed to meet in the Raadsaal close by are not so sure that heaven-enlightened wisdom broug
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TROUT FISHING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CALIFORNIA
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, an
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ROUND THE WORLD IN HASTE
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 m
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BLUE JAYS AND ALMONDS
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 ave
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IN CORSICA
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 populati
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ON THE MATTERHORN
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 plai
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AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS
AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS
All Zurich turned out to see the procession that was a mile long and overlapped, and went past double, going opposite ways, and the skies were blue as amethyst, and the lake was like the heavens, while underfoot the white dust lay thick until the growing, hurrying crowd sent it flying. All trades, with banners and bands and emblems, were represented; there were iron workers, tin workers, gardeners, women and children. One beautiful young girl in a cap of liberty waved a red banner to Freedom amo
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AT LAS PALMAS
AT LAS PALMAS
On a map the Canary Islands look like seven irregular fish scales, and of these Grand Canary is a cycloid scale. For it is round and has deep folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle. Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem to run to the centre. With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first bl
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THE TERRACINA ROAD
THE TERRACINA ROAD
Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs from Terr
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A SNOW-GRIND
A SNOW-GRIND
Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier than writin
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ACROSS THE BIDASSOA
ACROSS THE BIDASSOA
I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them, though th
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ON A VOLCANIC PEAK
ON A VOLCANIC PEAK
I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches of the Canary Islands. The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt, and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge of the crater was of white fired rock; inside
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SHEEP AND SHEEP-HERDING
SHEEP AND SHEEP-HERDING
With the introduction of fences, which are now coming in with tremendous rapidity, sheep-herding as an art is inevitably doomed. When I knew north-west Texas a few years ago there was not a fence between the Rio Grande and the north of the Panhandle, but now barbed or plain wire is the rule, and in the pastures it is, of course, not so necessary to look after the sheep by day and night. In Australia I have not seen those under my charge for a week or more at a time. While there was water in the
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RAILROAD WARS
RAILROAD WARS
Everybody nowadays has some notion of the way the railroad business of America is carried on. They know that there are too many roads for the traffic, and that, to prevent a general ruin, the managers combine, pay the profits into the hands of a receiver, and receive again from him a certain agreed proportion of the whole sum. But this method of "pooling" the profits is sometimes unsatisfactory. One line will think it gets too little if the fluctuations of trade send more freight over its rails
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AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS
AMERICAN SHIPMASTERS
It may seem strange to people who are entirely unacquainted with the methods of shipmasters and officers generally in the American mercantile marine that a sailor should have such a deadly objection to sail in one of their vessels; but those who know the hideous brutalities which continually occur on such ships will quite understand the feelings of a man who finds himself on a vessel which would probably have been manned willingly if it had not a bad character among seamen. I have known an Ameri
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TRAMPS
TRAMPS
The poor tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy—and something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct classes of tramps—those who take the road to look for work, and those (the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that they may never find it. In this preponderance of the lazy traveller over the
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TEXAS ANIMALS
TEXAS ANIMALS
The fauna of Texas is very varied, and a naturalist may find plenty there for his note-book, and much to reflect on, if he be a contemplative man. A hunter may satisfy himself, too, if he goes into the extreme west and north-west, but he must be quick about it, for I received a letter years ago from a friend of mine in the south part of the Panhandle of Texas, in which he told me that all the land was getting fenced in, even in those parts that I knew in 1884 as wide and open prairie, and when f
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IN A SAILORS' HOME
IN A SAILORS' HOME
After coming back to England from Australia in the barque Essex I found "home" a curious place, which afforded very few prospects of a satisfactory job. For if there is one thing more than another borne in upon anyone who returns from the Colonies it is the apparent impossibility of earning one's living in London. Every avenue is as much choked as the entrance to the pit at a popular theatre on a first night. And though it is said that we may always get a tooth-brush into a portmanteau however f
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THE GLORY OF THE MORNING
THE GLORY OF THE MORNING
According to his temperament a man's memory of travel and the strange wild places of the earth deals chiefly with one set of reminiscences or with another. For me the remembered mornings of the wide and lonely world, whether in the bush, or on the prairie, or the veldt, or at sea, are my chiefest delight. For in them, as in the morning even now, is something especial and peculiar which recalls and recreates youth: which breaks up the dead customs of to-day, and sends one back again to the swift,
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