Part 12

"My dear fellow, why not do it yourself?"

"It would be taking a mean advantage of other writers," I said. "Besides, I'm in no mood to write."

Overcome by my generosity, he at last wrote a column and a half. I shall always treasure that interview, for when he tired I dictated some of it myself. The only thing I really objected to was his determination not to let me say what I meant to say about the Australian financial outlook. Under the circumstance of the failure of credit, the matter touched me deeply, and was a personal grievance. But he persisted that if I were too pessimistic the article would never see type, and I couldn't have the money. I gave way, and condescended to have hopes about Australia. But even when I got his cheque I was not much further forward.

I went to my banker's agents and asked them to cash a cheque. Would I pay for a cable home and out? No I would not, because I didn't know whether my account was overdrawn or not. All I knew was that if they would cash a cheque I would telegraph from Port Said or Naples and see it was met. So that failed. I tried Cook's, who had cashed cheques for me on the Continent. They also spoke of cabling. I explained matters, but they had no faith. Nobody had.

I began to think I would have to work my passage, for I was determined to get away inside of two weeks or perish. I looked up the vessels in port in case I might know some of them. They were all strangers. In such cases, unless one is in a hurry such as I was, for my return was urgent, it is best to tackle some cargo boat. It is often possible to get a passage for a quarter the mail-boat fare, for the tramp steamer's captain looks on the fare as his own and never mentions passengers to the owner. But I couldn't wait for a good old tramp, and at last, in despair, my friend and a friend of his and I clubbed everything together that was valuable and raised a fare to Naples on the proceeds. I left Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend. I raised five pounds on a cheque with the steward and spent the whole of it in rickshaws and carriages. I saw what one could in the time, for I breakfasted at one place, lunched at another, dined at a third. I mean one of these days to spend a week or two at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo. At Mount Lavinia I got the one dinner of my life. I cordially recommend the cooking.

We ran to Cape Guardafui in a gale, a sticky hot gale which made life unendurable. The Red Sea was a relief and not too hot, but how we pitied the poor devils quartered at Perim, and the lighthouses seen at the Two Brothers. I would as soon camp for ever on the lee side of Tophet. But my first trip through the Canal was charming. At night, when the vessel's search-light threw its glare on the banks, the white sand looked like snow-drifts. In the day the far-off deserts were a dream of red sands, and red sand mingled with the horizon. At last we came to the Mediterranean and I landed at Naples. The driver of my carrozzella took my last money, so I put up at a good hotel and wired to England at the hotel-keeper's expense. I went overland to London, and was back there in four days under four months from the time I started from New York.

There are scores of people--I meet them every day--who are in a constant state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A first-class ticket from London viâ New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, Colombo, the Suez, Naples, Gibraltar and Plymouth will run to £125, without including the cost of sleeping-car accommodation and food in the American trans-continental journey. If he stays anywhere it is a mighty knowing and economical traveller who gets off under £200 or £250 by the time he turns up in London.

Now as to what it cost me when I meant doing it moderately. It cost £8 to New York. Owing to business in New York I stayed there a fortnight, and it cost me $4 a day, say £11. The journey to San Francisco ran to £12 including provisions. The Pacific voyage was £22 in all. The fare from Sydney to Melbourne for ocean passengers is £2. 1s. 6d. To Naples I paid £32. Another £12 brought me to London. This runs up to £99.

If I had not been in a hurry I could have done the homeward part for less. If I had been twenty-five I would have gone steerage. But with time to spare for looking up a tramp I might have easily got to London as the only passenger for £20. If I had not stayed in New York and had had the time I could have cut expenses to £70.

But any young man, writer or not, who wants to see a bit of the world, can do it on that if he has the grit to rough it. He can cut the Atlantic journey to £3, and learn some things he never knew while doing it. I can put anyone up to crossing America for £15 at any time. But if he spends £20 he can see Niagara, the work of God, and Chicago, the chef d'oeuvre of the Devil. The Pacific can be done for £20 steerage; and he can stay in Australia a month for £10, and a year for £20 if he knows what I know. The steerage fare home is £16. I fancy it would be the best investment that any young fellow could make. He would learn more of what life is than the world of London would teach him in the ordinary grooves in ten years.

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 avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday, and cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe. Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground, for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower. Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the avenue--sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.

Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies, who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths of winter, why he had been fool enough to drop his savings into a bank with the conscience of an ill-regulated automatic machine, which takes everything and gives nothing back. If he had really needed the almonds, they would have been put in an accessible spot. Though this perhaps is a scientific view, I must acknowledge that we were grateful to the birds who stored them for us, and, by making fools of themselves, gave us the opportunity of gathering, if not grapes from thistles, at least almonds from oaks.

Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage grubs--that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an explanation--to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn mystery--is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into--indeed they will place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holes they had themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder, less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.

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 population ready to acknowledge the majesty of the law. The attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't be able to get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself.

Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's time. French justice is a fairly good brand of justice after all. The magistrates administer the law, and the system of military roads all over the island makes it easy for the police to get about. When a criminal gets away from them he has to take to the hills and to keep there. It is such solitary fugitives who still give the stranger a notion that the country is essentially criminal. But he is a bandit, not a brigand. He may rob, but he does not kidnap. His idea of ransom is what is in a man's pockets, not what his Government will pay to prevent having his throat cut. After all, there is such a thing in England as highway robbery, and in Corsica robbery is usually without violence. If a bandit is treated as a gentleman he will be polite, even though he points a gun at a visitor's stomach and requests him to hand over all he happens to have about him.

I went to Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of the island than I did. We landed at Bastia, where, by the way, Nelson also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring, sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for that matter, in the world. For the island is fertile and is yet barren; it is mountainous and has great stretches of plain in it along the eastern shore. Though it is but fifty miles across and little more than a hundred long, there is a real range of rugged high mountains in it, two of them, Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, being nearly 9000 feet high, while three others, Pagliorba, Padre and d'Oro are over 7000 feet. The rocks of these ranges are primary and metamorphic, and the scenery is bold. Yet it is kindly and gracious for the forests are thick. On the peaks, and in the recesses of the loftier forests, a wild black sheep, the mufflon, can still be hunted. And the tumbling streams and rivers are full of trout. There are few better trout streams in Europe than the Golo, which runs into the sea on the east coast through a big salt-water lagoon called Biguglia. When I saw it the stream was in fine order, and I longed to get out of the train to throw a fly upon it. For the island is now so civilised that a railway runs from Bastia across the summit of the island by the towns of Corte and Vivario down to Ajaccio. But when I and my friend were there the train only ran to Corte. We had to drive from there across the summit to Vivario, whither the rail had reached, in the western slope of the hills. Corte sits queen-like on the summit of the island, and is quiet and ancient. Yet some day it will be, like Orezza with its strong iron waters, a health resort. The French go more and more to Corsica, and the intruding English have what is practically an English hotel at Ajaccio. There is another in the forests of Vizzavona.

It is a quick descent from the summit to Ajaccio, which lies smiling in its gulf, that is somewhat like one of the deep indentations of Puget Sound. We stayed there for a week and during that time took a diligence and went up to Vico. It was on this little forty-mile journey among the hills that I saw most of Corsica's character. And at first it was curiously melancholy to me. As we drove inland we met numbers of the peasants, men and women, and at first it seemed as if a great epidemic must have devastated the country. Almost every woman we saw was in black. But this comes from a habit that they have of wearing black for three years after any of their relatives die. Even in a healthy country (and the lowlands, or the plage of Corsica, is not healthy in summer) most families must lose a member in three years, and thus it happens that most of the women are in perpetual mourning. The solidarity of the family is great in Corsica. It must be or women would not renounce their natural and beautiful dress to adorn themselves with colours. It was curious to see at times some young girl not in mourning. I could not help thinking that she had an unfair advantage over her darkly-dressed fellows.

We came at last to Vico in the hills, and found it picturesque to the last degree, and quite equally unsanitary. It was at once beautifully picturesque and foully offensive. Nothing less than a tropical thunderstorm could have cleansed it. But none of its inhabitants minded. They loafed about the deadly streams of filth and were quite unconscious of anything disagreeable in the air. A Spanish village is purity itself to such a place as Vico. But then the proud and haughty Corsicans object to doing any work except upon their own fields. If an ordinance had been passed to cleanse Vico's streets and that dreadful main drain, its stream from the hills, it would have been necessary to import Italians to do it. For all hard labour outside mere tillage is done by them. I would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service.

In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here and there through le maquis, the scrub or bush of Corsica. And as we went we got a good view of many little mountain villages, which hang for the most part on the slope of the hills, being neither in the valley nor on the summit. We were high enough to be among the chestnuts; vineyards there were none. And at last we came to Renno, and found the villagers taking a sad holiday. I spoke to them in bad Italian, and found that it seemed good Corsican to them, perhaps even classical Corsican, if there be such a thing, and learnt that there had been a funeral of a little child that morning. They proposed to do no more work that day. Most of the men were loafing along a wall by their little inn, and they were soon reinforced by many women. In a few minutes the village had almost forgotten the funeral in the excitement of seeing two strangers, foreigners, Englishmen. They told us that so far as they remember no foreigner, not even a Frenchman, had been there before. Their village was indeed lost to the world; they looked on Vico, evil-smelling Vico, as a great, fine town: Ajaccio was a distant and immense city. But no one from Renno had been there. It was indeed possible that most of the inhabitants had never seen the sea. There was something touching in this quaint and simple isolation, and the men were simple too. I invited the whole male population of the place to drink with me at the poor little cabaret. The drink they took (it was the only drink save some sour wine) was white brandy at ten centimes the glass. To make friends in this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small measure their curiosity about the world beyond le maquis, and beyond the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman, spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke "Pondicherry?"

Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart. They are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians. And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I know not with what accuracy, that most of the mouchards, or spies, and the agents provocateurs of the French police, are Corsican by birth. But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.

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 plain duty always before him. He ought to know, and cannot refuse to learn, even at the cost of toil and trouble, all the ways of the human mind. And experience at second-hand can never be relied on. The average man is afraid of saying he was afraid. And the average climber is one who has long passed the interesting stage when he first faced the unknown. I was obviously a novice, and a green one, when I tried the Matterhorn. That I was such a novice is the only thing which makes me think my experience at all interesting from the psychological point of view. And to my mind that point of view is also the literary one.

On looking back I certainly believe I was very much afraid of the mountains in general and of the Matterhorn in particular. It is difficult, however, to say where fear begins and mere natural nervousness leaves off. Fear, after all, is often the note of warning sounded by a man's organism in the face of the unknown. It is hardly strange it should be felt upon the mountains. But if I was afraid of the mountains (and I thought that I was) I was certainly curious. During my first week at Zermatt I had done a good second-class peak, but had been told that the difference between the first and second class was prodigious. This naturally excited curiosity. And I began to feel that my curiosity could only be satisfied by climbing the Matterhorn. For one thing that mountain has a great name; for another it looks inaccessible. And it had only been done once that year. If I did it I should be the first Englishman on the summit for the season. And the guides were doubtful whether it would "go."

But, after all, was it not said by folks who climbed to the Schwartzsee that the mountain was really easy? Were not the slabs above the Shoulder roped? Did not processions go up it in the middle of the season? And yet it was now only the first of July and there was a good deal of new snow on the mountain. And why were the guides just a little doubtful? Perhaps they were doubtful of me; and yet Joseph Pollinger had taken me up three smaller peaks. I decided that I had hired him to do the thinking. But I could not make him do it all.

The day I had spent upon the Wellenkuppe had been a time of imagination, and I had seen the beauty of things. But from the Matterhorn I can eliminate the element of beauty. I saw very little beauty in it or from it. I had other things to do than to think of the sublime. But I could think of the ridiculous, and at one o'clock in the morning, when we started from the hut with a lantern, I said the whole proceeding was folly. I was a fool to be there. And down below me, far below me, glimmered the crevassed slopes of the Furgg Glacier. I grew callous and absorbed, and I shrugged my shoulders as the dawn came up. I did not care to turn my eyes to look upon the red rose glory of the lighted Dom and Taschhorn. Let them glow!

At the upper ice-filled hut we rested. The vastness of the mountain began to affect me. I saw by now that the Wellenkuppe was a little thing. The three thousand extra feet made all the difference. This was obviously beyond me, and I could never get to the summit. It was ridiculous of the Pollingers to think I could. I told them so quite crossly as we went on. Probably they had made a mistake; they would, no doubt, find it out on the Shoulder. It seemed rather hard that I should have to get there when it was so easy to turn back at once. But I said nothing more and climbed. My heart did its work well, and my head did not ache. This was a surprise to me, as I had looked for some sort of malaise above twelve thousand feet. As it did not come I stared at the big world about me. I viewed it all with a kind of anger and alarmed surprise. Where was I being taken to? I began to see they were taking me out of the realm of the usual. I was rapidly ascending into the unknown, and I did not like it in the least. If we fell from the arête we might not stop going for four thousand feet. Down below, a thin, blue line was a bergschrund that was capable of swallowing an army corps. That patch of bluish patina was a tumbled mass of séracs. The sloping glacier looked flat.