Harry Alverson Franck

“ Men who had waded through the snow on the docks of Liverpool two weeks before took to sleeping on the deck of the poop, in the thinnest of garb. With the smell of land in our nostrils, the good-night chorus was sung more than once on the eleventh evening, and our sleep was brief. Before darkness fled I had climbed again to my coign of vantage on the foremast. The first gray of dawn revealed the dim outline of a low mountain range, tinged with color by the unborn sunrise behind it. Slowly the mountains faded from view as the lowlands rose up to greet us. ”

“ 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 of miles away, but just behind the flanking range. ”

“ The dwellers in the cities of Asia Minor are the most incorrigible stay-at-homes on the globe. Travel for pleasure or instruction they have never dreamed of. Only the direst necessity can draw them forth from their accustomed haunts, and they know no more of the territory a few miles outside their walls than of the antipodes. It cost me a half-day’s search to find the American consulate, a shame-faced hovel decorated with a battered shield of the size and picturesqueness of a peddler’s license. The consul himself opened the door and my hopes fell—for he was a native. ”

“ I had but to step off the highway to gather apples under the trees or to escape from the glaring sun.
Night overtook me at St. Maurice, a sure-footed mountain village, straddling the Rhône where it roars through a narrow gorge on its way to the lake beyond. Even within doors the villagers speak a high-pitched treble, so fixed has become the habit of raising their voices above the constant boom of the cataract. In my lodging directly above, the roaring intruded on my dreams, and in fancy I struggled against the rushing current that carried me down a sheer mountainside. ”

“ One can no more conceive of a Hollander who looks forward to a career in the gentler walks of life “beginning at the bottom” than of one who aspires to the papacy taking a wife. He whose appearance stamps him as of those who live by the sweat of the brow cannot complain of any overt act of oppression. Yet he is early reminded that, as a worker with his hands, he has a distinct place in society and that he must keep to it. Among his fellow workmen, in his own caste, he lives and moves and has his being as in our own land. ”

“ There were coils of rope-like pastry fried in oil, lumps, balls, cakes of sweetmeats, chappatties—bread-sheets smaller and more brittle than those of the Arab—pans of dark red chillies, potatoes cut into small cubes and covered with a green curry sauce. The Hindu is as much given to nibbling as the Mohammedan. By choice, perhaps, he would eat seldom and heartily, but he lives the most literally from hand to mouth of any human creature, and no sooner earns a half-anna than he hurries away to sacrifice it to his ever-unsatisfied hunger. ”

“ The territory beyond Banpáwa was more savage than any we had yet encountered; everywhere a rank vegetation so thick that our feet rarely reached the ground. Now and again we plunged into a thicket only to be caught as in a net, and, powerless to advance, retreated with rent garments and bleeding hands and faces to fight our way around the impenetrable spot. We were now in the very heart of the mountains. Range after range of unbroken jungle succeeded each other. From every summit there spread out a boundless forest of teak and bamboo, turgid with riotous undergrowth. ”

“ Few corners of the globe can equal in fearful stretches of utter solitude this land so aptly termed, in Biblical phraseology, “the waste places of the earth.” All through the day I tramped on, with never a sight nor sound of an animate object, save once in mid-afternoon, when I broke my fast on bread-sheets and cakes of ground sugar-cane at an isolated shop. Darkness fell over the same haggard wilderness. The wind, howling across the solitary waste, filled my ears. On this blackest of nights I could not have made out a ghost a yard away, and the unknown highway led me into many a pitfall. ”

“ The jungle was humming its un-cadenced tune. I climbed to the veranda and lay down, certain that I had seen the last of James, the Australian.
Under the hut sounded the thump, thump, thump of the pestle. What exponents of the “simple life,” of which we hear so much where it does not exist, are these jungle dwellers of Siam! They are as independent of the outside world as their neighbors, the apes, in the tree-tops. The youthful “wild man” takes his mate and a dah and wanders off into the wilderness. He needs nothing else to win a livelihood and rear a family. ”

“ With the Australian’s first bucketful we had the conflagration under control and it was but the work of a moment to put it out entirely. When the last ember had ceased to glow, the first native arrived with water from the stream. Behind him stretched a long line of servants with overflowing buckets. They fought with each other in their eagerness to deluge the charred corner of the veranda. Those who could not reach it dashed their water on the surrounding multitude, and the real firemen; then ran for more. We were forced to resort to violence to save ourselves from drowning. ”

“ An hour later the howling of dogs heralded my approach to some hamlet. Once in it, I halted to listen for sounds of human life. Its inhabitants, apparently, were lost in slumber, for what Syrian could be awake and silent? The lights that shone from every hovel proved nothing, for the Arab nations are unaccountably fearful of the evil spirits that lurk in the darkness. I beat off the snapping curs and started on again. Suddenly muffled peals of laughter and the excited voices of male and female sounded from the depths of a building before me. ”

“ A multitude of natives disported in the muddy waters of the Hoogly before a sacred bathing ghat. Below the bridge scores of ships lay at anchor, native sampans and barges inveigled their way among them, from the docks came the rattle of steam cranes and the shrill chatter of stevedores at their labor. Here, at last, was a real city, with all its familiar roar and bustle. My companions departed to visit a missionary notorious for his friendliness to beachcombers, and I plunged at random into the stream of humanity that surged through the dusty streets. ”

“ Travel for pleasure has ever been considered a special privilege of the wealthy. That a man without ample funds should turn tourist seems to his fellow-beings an action little less reprehensible than an attempt to finance a corporation on worthless paper. He who would see the world, and has not been provided the means thereto by a considerate ancestor, should sit close at home until his life work is done, his fortune made. Then let him travel; when his eyes have grown too dim to catch the beauty of a distant landscape, when struggle and experience have rendered him blasé and unimpressionable. ”

“ To-day the pedestrian runs no more risk than in England. There is a suggestion of the British Isles, too, in the open country of the Island Kingdom. Just such splendidly constructed highways stretch away between bright green hedge rows. Populous villages appear in rapid succession; the intervening territory, thickly settled and fertile, shows the hand of the industrious husbandman. But old England herself cannot rival this sea-girdled kingdom in her clear, exhilarating air of summer, in her picturesque landscapes of checkerboard rice fields, certainly not in the scenic charm of the Inland Sea. ”

“ There are Oriental cities in which the stranger would hesitate to wander after nightfall; in this well-ordered land he feels instinctively that he is running less risk of disagreeable encounter than in any metropolis of our own country. Class and mass mingle in the multitude; evil and brutal faces pass here and there; the European is sometimes subjected to the annoyance of unseemly curiosity, he may even be roughly jostled now and then; for the politeness of the Jap is individual, never collective. But rarely does the sound of brawling rise above the peaceful falsetto of scraping clogs. ”

“ We caught up the knapsack and walked rapidly away; for well we knew the agonized screams that would greet our perfidy and the menacing mob that would gather at our heels. Four steps we had taken, and still no outcry. We hurried on, not daring to look back. Suddenly a roar of laughter sounded behind us. I glanced over my shoulder. Not a man pursued us. The family still squatted on the bamboo floor of the booth, doubled up and shaking with mirth.
We levied on the shopkeepers whenever hunger assailed us thereafter, though never eating more than two or three cents’ worth at any one stall. ”

“ Further away rose an unsteady minaret, and beyond, the tree-girdled dwelling of the Italian monks. To the north, in the wretched roadstead, a few decrepit fishing smacks, sad remnants of the fleets whose mariners once caroused and sang in the streets of Tyre, lay at anchor. Down on the encircling beach, half buried under the drifting sands and worn away by the lapping waves, lay the ruins of what must long ago have been great business blocks. The Tyreans of to-day, mere parasites, have borne away stone by stone these edifices of a mightier generation to build their own humble habitations. ”

“ Suddenly my attention was drawn to a priest of Buddha pushing his way through the throng. The yellow robe is rare in northern India, yet it was something more than the garment that led me to poke the policeman in the ribs. For the arms and shoulder of its wearer were white and the face that grinned beneath the shaven poll could have been designed in no other spot on earth than the Emerald Isle!
“Blow me,” cried the officer, “if it ain’t the Irish Buddhist, the bishop of Rangoon! I met ’im once in Singapore. Everybody in Burma knows ’im;” and he stepped forward with a greeting. ”

“ Four days later we anchored in quarantine at the mouth of the Woosung, then steamed slowly up the murky stream between flat, verdureless banks adorned by immense godowns, and docked close off the Sailors’ Home.
It is at Shanghaï that the American wanderer, circumnavigating the globe from west to east, begins to feel that he is approaching his native land. Not only is he technically at home in one section of the international city, but it is here that he meets the vanguard of penniless adventurers from “the States.” ”

“ I donned the helmet and strolled down to the landing jetty, where “the boys” were accustomed to gather of an evening to enjoy the only cool breeze that ever invaded Colombo. Few had been the changes in the beachcomber ranks during my absence. Amid the drowsy yarning there sounded often a familiar refrain:—“The circus is coming.” No one knew just when; but then, one doesn’t worry in Ceylon. If he hasn’t rice, he eats bananas. If he can’t find work, it is a joy merely to lie in the shade and breathe. ”

“ Many, indeed, journey to the seaport, never suspecting that to reach this land of fabulous wealth they must travel on the ocean; more than one has only the vaguest notion of what an ocean is. When the endless expanse of water stretches out before them, all the combined miseries of their native land and the wheedling of the most silver-tongued steamship agent cannot induce them to trust themselves on its billows; and in dread and fear they hurry home again.
It may be said with little danger of error, too, that the average American knows very little of the Italian of this northern section. ”

“ A wind from off the Mediterranean put the leaden clouds to flight late in the afternoon and the sun was smiling bravely when the path turned into a well-kept road, winding through a forest of orange trees where countless natives, in a garb that did not seem particularly adapted to such occupation, were stripping the overladen branches of their fruit. Her oranges and her tobacco give livelihood—of a sort—to the ten thousand inhabitants of modern Sidon. ”

“ We have “runners” in America, but these procurers that fight for a meager percentage in Naples are not merely the dregs of city life; even the man who has left his telegraph instrument or bookkeeper’s stool during the afternoon prowls through the dark streets in quest of a stray soldo. The barber roams at large to drag into his shop those whose faces show need of his services; the merchant stands before his door and bawls and beckons to the passing throng like a side-show barker; the ticket-agent tramps up and down the wharves striving to sell passage, at regular price if necessary ”

“ At the very brink of the river began a riotous tropical jungle, covering hill and valley as far as the eye could see, and broken nowhere in all its extent by clearing or the suggestion of a pathway.
“There,” went on the commissioner, “is one of the wildest regions under British rule. Tigers abound, snakes sun themselves on every bush, wild animals lie in wait in every thicket. The valleys are full of dacoits—savage outlaws that even the government fears; and the spring freshets have made the mountain streams raging torrents. There is absolutely nothing to guide you. ”