Excursion

“ It is evident from this that excursions are as necessary in the country as in the town, where instead of the "fields and forests" perhaps only a park is possible, but there is no virtue in an excursion taken without preparation. ”

“ It utterly spoils an excursion if you have folk in the boat who are thinking all the time a good deal more of their dress than of the trip. It was my misfortune once to go for a water picnic with two ladies of this kind. ”

“ It would not be wise to fix any country excursion for a few weeks to come. Let the young people enjoy any fine afternoon that they might be able to turn to the account of a walk, or a drive, or a sail on the river ”

“ If the excursion is made by water, a crowd of boats, pulled by swift rowers, will perhaps be seen putting out from a secluded bight, or from behind a wooded promontory, and giving chase to the strangers, with loud outcries to stop. ”

“ The intelligent traveller, however, must not anticipate an excursion as destitute of interest and variety as the surface of the country which he is about to traverse, for like the shabby mien of the miser, its aspect but ill accords with its hoards ”

“ Excursions on boat or trolley will be delightful, and will teach the best routes, the best terminal stations, and the best restaurants, and some day when a patient is well enough to take an excursion, some part of his own immediate neighborhood may be shown him which he has never seen before. ”

“ I had no inducement to proceed further into the interior. I had been sufficiently disappointed in the termination of this excursion, and the track before me was still less inviting. ”

“ The attendance at baths, the rise of summer resorts and air-cures, and furloughs for all classes of officers, have become regular institutions, while they were formerly indulged only in cases of sickness; and the excursions of school vacations, the pleasure-trains and the extra trains on holidays, long wedding tours, excursion parties to foreign lands, or around the world, are evidences of the taste for traveling that modern men feel, and of the ease with which it is gratified. ”

“ The very morning after our arrival we set out on a small reconnoitring excursion to examine the ground, in order to decide, among so many objects claiming our attention at once, what, considering the brief time at our disposal, we might hope to undertake successfully, and what must once for all be abandoned. ”

“ I said, this is a good pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have the “Oh, my” rather bad.
I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves. Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there ”

“ Through Portugal.
Exercise 119.—Write, either in letter form or as a composition, an account of any journey you have taken. It is better to select a small part of a trip, and describe that quite completely, than to try to cover a long journey. A day's excursion, if it is interesting, is enough as a rule for one exercise, although this is by no means an invariable rule.
The following subjects are given as suitable for travel compositions, or as suggesting others:—
1. Our trip to the county fair. 2. The journey I took the first time I saw the ocean. 3. ”

“ A country holiday for me had always meant incessant occupation of one kind or another, fishing, climbing, boating, long cycling excursions, and an industrious endeavour to explore all scenes of interest within a reasonable compass. ”

“ Or the fathers and mothers in some multitudinous train of weary excursionists returning exhausted from a day of rest by the sea, would find the dark fabric, standing out against the evening sky, useful in diverting some bilious child from its introspection, and be suddenly startled by the swift transit of a huge black flapping shape that strained upward against the guides. ”

“ Excursions round the world are now made with such facility and regularity that the number of those who undertake them is rapidly increasing, while the variety and vivid contrast of the traveler's experiences, as he passes from continent to continent, offer an equal temptation to edify the stay-at-homes with a book describing the tour. ”

“ In these excursions one learns to understand the fascination this life must have for a people among whom civilization is as yet but very incomplete; it is full of physical enjoyment, without any mental effort. Up early in the morning and off on their fishing or hunting excursions long before dawn, they return by the middle of the day, lie in their hammocks and smoke during the hours of greatest heat ”

“ After a few tours on the Continent your first hour in a railway or diligence may be new and enjoyable, but you soon begin to wish for the end of the road, and after a short stay in the town you have come to you begin to talk (or think) of when you are to leave. Now a feature of the boating tour is that quiet progress can be enjoyed all the time, because you have personal exertion or engagement for every moment, and your observation of the scenery around is now most minute and interesting, because every bend and slope of it tells at once what you have to do. ”

“ Occasionally, walking trips, with one or two companions, gave well-deserved vacations—trips from which the walkers returned tired and penniless, but inspired by the beauty of nature in the pleasant French countryside and thrilled with the stupendous grandeur of the Alpine scenery. ”

“ It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours—of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening’s rest. ”

“ Such an informal and unusual way of wandering puts you as a rule on a friendly, companionable footing with everybody you meet: people take an interest in your journey, they confide in you and you in them, there is a sort of freemasonry about the road that has its attractions, you seem to belong to the countryside, to be a part and parcel of your surroundings for the time being, in strong contrast with the stranger suddenly arriving by the railway from somewhere far away. He is brought, the driving tourist comes—a distinction with a difference! ”

“ A voyage on it is one of the most romantic entertainments offered to the traveller. The scenery is peaceful, and exceedingly pretty. There are few conspicuous plantations with mansions and sugar-stacks of any pretensions, but the panorama from the deck of the steamer is always pleasing. There is an air of leisure and “afternoon” about the expedition, which is heightened by the idle case of the inhabitants lounging at the rude wharves and landing-places, and the patience of the colored fishers, boys in scant raiment and women in sun-bonnets, seated on the banks. ”

“ HITTING THE TRAIL WALKING tours are popularly supposed to be feasible chiefly for those to whom this method of travel is incidental to their occupation—timber cruisers, landlookers, prospectors, game wardens and trappers of the North—men who daily match themselves against the forces of Nature. ”

“ Travel is brought home to us, and we visit in spirit every grove and hamlet that tempts us in the distance. Sehnsucht—the passion for what is ever beyond—is livingly expressed in that white riband of possible travel that severs the uneven country; not a ploughman following his plough up the shining furrow, not the blue smoke of any cottage in a hollow, but is brought to us with a sense of nearness and attainability by this wavering line of junction. ”

“ The lines of travel chosen are such as will give the tourist the most favorable opportunities for visiting the celebrated summer resorts en route, and secure the advantages of palace coaches, dining cars, quick transit, and sure connections,—considerations which combine to make a journey enjoyable, and by means of which a trip becomes a luxury as a means as well as an end. ”

“ The ceaseless tide of travel ever hurries on. How many of those seated in the luxurious coaches note the beauty of my hills? Cloud-shadows chase each other, and hawks wheel over their summits, while the train speeds on, intent upon overtaking other hills and its remote destination: the beauty of my hills remains for me. ”

“ A man paddling a canoe, or carrying a pack all day, will eat a great deal more than would the same man sitting a horse. A trip in the clear, bracing air of the mountains arouses keener appetites than a desert journey near the borders of Mexico, and a list of supplies ample for the one would be woefully insufficient for the other. ”

“ Travel, like politics, makes strange bedfellows, and especially that kind of travel in which all companions must, from necessity, mingle on a common level, eat their simple rations by the same camp fire, and sleep side by side beneath the same open sky. This observation is suggested by a night spent in camp near Bear River. Our ox train had just forded that rocky stream, to avoid the excessive toll which was demanded for the privilege of crossing upon the new bridge. ”

“ Travel, according to my experience, does not exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of most books of travels. I am thinking of travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially in Italy. Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook ”

“ Then there began a strange feeling of freedom and novelty which lasted to the end of the tour.
Something like it is felt when you first march off with a knapsack ready to walk anywhere, or when you start alone in a sailing-boat for a long cruise. ”

“ Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a lively and pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes and fiddles and bagpipes. ”

“ So up they toiled through pitch darkness, through rain and cloud, passed the night in a building said to be on the summit, and returned down the mountain in the morning, to catch their train, through as dense a fog as ever exasperated a hurried tourist. But they had been to the top! Are there anywhere else in the world people who travel two hundred miles for a single day’s recreation? ”

“ To such tourists Madame de Stael’s definition of travel—Le voyage, un triste plaisir—cannot, of course, apply. Their whole journey through life is indeed singularly placid, conducing to health, and extreme longevity ”

“ Spring was here and cast its largess at her feet,—fate held back her eager hand.
A year she must wait, a year in which to win those necessaries of the long trail, without which all would fail.
Travel, even by so primitive a method as canoe and foot, must demand its toll of salvage. ”

“ Travel was regarded as an essential finish of one's education, whether one traveled alone or with a tutor. The fashion of travel once established, it often tempted men, and even women, of mature years to undertake extended journeys. The itinerary, of course, varied somewhat according to personal tastes and special needs, but in general the regions visited by tourists bom on the Continent were substantially the same as those that attracted Englishmen. ”

“ You make stops, you spend a night at the inn, you get out to look at the country, you turn aside to take breakfast in some charming spot. What difference does it make to you as a traveler? You are in no hurry. Your object is not to arrive anywhere, but to find amusement while on the road. Your true goal is the trip itself. ”

“ Many short trips may be taken from here either by boat or train, and he who would fill his portfolio with quaint and lovely pictures, will find his enthusiasm aroused, no matter in which direction he may venture, or whether his expedition be on land 135 or water. Interesting localities are always within easy reach, and the moderate rate for transportation and accommodation render all points accessible to the traveller whose purse is of the most slender dimensions. ”

“ The man who goes upon a walking tour should be open to all the usual interests. He should enjoy the country and enjoy the churches and enjoy the beetles, but also, and as a very important item, he should enjoy the walk. ”

“ If he be wise, the visitor will not exhaust in a single tour of the sun the pleasures yet in store, but, after a fall, try a ravine or a mountain ascent, thus introducing that variety which is the spice of all our pleasures. ”

“ Neither speed, by which we miss much, nor reliance on guide-books formed any part of my programme, for, as Sir Arthur Helps says, "in travel it is remarkable how much more pleasure we obtain from unexpected incidents than from deliberate sightseeing." ”

“ The return voyage home in the "trades" is delightful—a warm sun and a good steady breeze, not a brace touched for a week or more, a water-spout and a rain-squall to vary the monotony of the every-day routine. ”

“ Should you wish merely to make a rapid tour of the mountain region, it will be best so to arrange your route before starting that the first day will bring you where there is something to be seen, to a comfortable hotel, and from which your journey may be continued with an economy of time and money. ”

“ You would remain gazing drowsily for ever at the lake like the lover on the Greek urn that Keats described. But all around are the mountains which distil an air keen and exhilarating, so that before you know {201} it you are set walking, or riding or climbing—in some way adventuring forth. Some people adventure forth in a carriage, but that is rather too like going out to battle in evening clothes. ”

“ During a long voyage, when for months you have seen nothing but water and sky, the smallest novelty which appears and promises variety for the eye and the mind, though only for a few minutes, is joyfully welcome. ”