CHAPTER XII. “art of Travel”

“ART OF TRAVEL”

Compilation of the Art of Travel—Lectures at Aldershot—Heliostat—Rifle screen—Reader newspaper

I was rather unsettled during a few years, wishing to undertake a fresh bit of geographical exploration, or even to establish myself in some colony; but I mistrusted my powers, for the health that had been much tried had not wholly recovered. On the other hand, there was abundance of useful work at home. Geographical exploration had become a topic of general interest. Burton had penetrated to Mecca. Japan was opened, and Laurence Oliphant had returned thence. Dr. Barth had come back at last from his long exploration of North Africa, including districts which are now under British and French rule and well mapped, but at that time were either partially or quite unknown. It is very different now; a letter can be sent for a penny to Kano, and Timbuctoo has become a French military station. Arctic expeditions by land and sea were then much to the fore; Dr. Rae (1813-1893) had performed his great journeys in Arctic North America, with a wonderfully small and inexpensive equipment. Lesseps was engaged in obtaining support for making the Suez Canal, and I must say that the British engineers who pooh-poohed its possibility at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, where it was the subject of a paper by Lesseps, have proved untrustworthy guides and prophets. I threw myself into the thick of the discussions and criticisms of whatever had just been done, and into the preparations for what was about to be undertaken, and was in short a very active member of the Council.

It was not long after my marriage that the character of a piece of work that lay before me was clearly perceived. It was ready to be taken in hand and most suitable to my powers. It was to aid others in the exploration of the then unknown parts of the world, especially of Africa, of whose total length as much had been seen by me in my two journeys as perhaps by any one else then living. Being placed on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, I thoroughly utilised that position to fulfil my object. The ignorance of travellers in any one country of the arts of travel employed in others was great, and I tried to make a compendium of them all. Having easy access to every traveller of note in England, I read many books of travel, or rather skimmed them for the purpose. Amongst others, I turned over every page in Pinkerton’s well-known series of large quarto volumes of the narratives of travellers.

The result was that sufficient material was gathered for the composition of a small book entitled the Art of Travel (Murray). It soon reached a second edition, and was afterwards rewritten and much enlarged to form a third edition, which was stereotyped, and even now continues to be sold. I also took considerable part in the first edition of the Hints to Travellers issued by the Geographical Society, which has long since quite outgrown its original form, all its chapters having been rewritten, each of them by experts. In its present shape it is a most trustworthy guide to travellers for such instrumental and other scientific work as they need to be acquainted with. The Anthropological “Notes and Queries” are a similar and most useful compendium relating to that branch of science. I had some share in this, but by no means a large one.

I cannot resist quoting the following letter from my cousin Charles Darwin, the great naturalist, whose opinion as the author of the Voyage of the Beagle was naturally valued by me most highly. I had asked him for hints while engaged on the first edition of the Art of Travel, and sent him a copy of it, to which he now refers. This was four years before the publication of the Origin of Species:—

“DOWN, Jan. 10, ?1855

“MY DEAR GALTON,—I received your kind present yesterday. I always thought your idea of your Book a very good one, and that you would do it capitally, and from what I have seen my forethought is, I am sure, quite justified. I hope that your volume will have a large sale, but what I fully expect is that it will have a long sale, and if you save from some disasters half a dozen explorers, I feel sure that you will think yourself well rewarded for all the trouble your volume must have cost you.—Believe me, my dear Galton, yours very truly,

“C. DARWIN”

The outbreak of the Crimean War showed the helplessness of our soldiers in the most elementary matters of camp-life. Believing that something could be done by myself towards removing this extraordinary and culpable ignorance, I offered to give lectures on the subject, gratuitously, at the then newly founded camp at Aldershot. As may be imagined from what is otherwise known of the confusion of the War Office at that time, no answer at all was sent to my letters, until I ventured to apply personally to the then Premier, Lord Palmerston, who at once caused me to be installed. It is evident from my old notebooks that I worked very hard to frame a suitable course of practical instruction and of lectures for those who cared to profit by them.

General Knowles (1797-1883) was then in command, and he gave me both moral and material help. He assigned me two huts, and made arrangements about hours. My second brother, Erasmus, was in camp as Captain in the 2nd Warwickshire Militia, and his presence was most grateful to me. I myself took a small house about two miles from my hut, and walked there and back each day. Several officers came, and not a few of them showed interest. A lecture was also given by me at the United Service Institution, and the newspapers warmly backed the attempt. The War Office requested that ten (I think) reproductions should be made of a cabinet with four drawers, containing models of what was exhibited in my lectures. One of the cabinets was sent to the South Kensington Museum, and may be there still. One was sent to Woolwich. The others were distributed elsewhere. I do not think that my lectures had much other result, because the rude teachings of the Crimean War soon superseded mine, and the army generally became expert in much of what I had wished should be known by them.

A small contrivance of my own, over which I spent a great deal of time, may be alluded to here; it is described at length in the Art of Travel, and in other publications, as a “Hand Heliostat”. I contrived and practised with it long before the present system of sun-signalling had been invented. The use of a heliostat for creating a point of light, visible at great distances for purposes of Ordnance triangulation, had long been fully recognised; a description of its employment from Snowdon to Scawfell has already been given in Chapter V. The difficulty in using a portable instrument is to direct the flash with sufficient accuracy of aim. If the part of the landscape upon which the flash falls could actually be seen by the operator, it would always appear to be of exactly the same size as the disc of the sun itself, whatever the distance may be; in other words, it subtends an angle of about 30 minutes of a degree. My plan was to divert a small part of the flash so as to create a mock-sun in the field of view of the instrument, which the operator could throw, by judicious handling, upon any desired spot in the landscape, with the assurance that persons on the ground covered by the mock-sun could see the flash. The instrument is now used in nautical surveys, as I was told by the late Hydrographer, Sir William Wharton, to enable shore parties to make their exact whereabouts visible to those on the ship. The heliostat that I usually carried with me went easily into a large waistcoat pocket, and was very efficient at a distance of ten miles. I should have been glad to possess one on many occasions when travelling in Damara Land. However, without additional complications, it could not be made into a really serviceable instrument for transmitting verbal messages. It would then require nearly as much trouble to carry as the present sun-signalling apparatus, while it would be less rapid and sure.

It is interesting to flash with a small mirror against a light-coloured surface that lies in shadow, as through an open window against the opposite wall of the room behind. The size and shape of the mirror is then seen to have very little influence on the size or shape of the mock-sun, even at moderate distances. In long-range signalling their influence is wholly inappreciable.

I may describe here another contrivance, partly belonging to Art-of-Travel matters, partly military, that I sent to the United Service Institution. It was appropriate to the days of “Brown Bess,” but useless as a protection against modern musket bullets with their flat trajectories. I showed it was easy to provide a screen under which A. could hit B. at any distance beyond, say, 200 yards, while on the other hand B. could not hit A., although he might see him clearly. The balls of B. would be intercepted by the target. The principle on which the target gave protection was that the flight of a bullet does not describe a symmetrical curve. Its course is nearly straight at first, then gradually curves downward until it may be said to plunge. If A. and B. are in full sight of one another but at some little distance apart, and fire at one another, the courses of the incoming and outgoing bullet are different. That of the incoming bullet is higher by several inches or feet than the outgoing. Consequently, if a shield be interposed, near to A., above his line of shooting and at such a height that it will not interfere with his outgoing shot, it will effectually prevent a shot of B. from touching him, and conversely. The numerical conditions are worked out on the paper. The idea took the fancy of some of the audience, as one that might possibly be of much service.

I was a humble sharer in an undertaking started by Herbert Spencer, of establishing a weekly newspaper of literature and science, that was to eclipse the existing ones. His contention was that, if a few selected men were to combine each to write one article weekly, on a subject within his own province, a periodical might be produced that would have great weight and authority. The late Sir Frederick Pollock undertook its general editorship, to be helped in all details by a paid sub-editor, Mr. B., while he would keep the more purely literary portion in his own hands. Tom Hughes (the author of Tom Brown) lent us his rooms and his co-operation. Tyndall undertook Physical Science; Huxley took Physiology, with reservation, as he could not afford to give much gratuitous work; Spencer, of course, took Philosophy; my part was to look after Travels and Geography, and there were a few others. We subscribed £100 each; Spencer persuaded a City friend to do a little more in order to start the concern, so a Limited Liability Company was formed, and the newspaper was called The Reader. It was an amusing experience, owing to Mr. B.’s insistence, from a commercial point of view, about the necessity of obtaining advertisements by all sorts of ingenious means, but some of which, in our opinions, were not quite above-board. Then it was brought home to us that, as our venture was one of limited liability, whatever we bought must be paid for at once, while what we were to receive would not be paid for many months. We were like children in the hands of Mr. B., who knew all the ins and outs of the commercial conditions of success, concerning which we were almost childishly ignorant. The newspaper proved dull, notwithstanding some really good articles. The management was naturally too amateurish; promised articles were delayed, and the time of the committee was too much wasted in frequent discussions about first principles, upon which Spencer loved to dilate. So The Reader did not thrive. Its expenditure exceeded its incomings, our reserve fund melted away, and the newspaper came to an end after about a year’s existence. We each lost our hundred pounds, but no more, and had gained an unexpected view of the seamy side of journalistic enterprise.