Part 11

I recall an instance of the extraordinary efficacy of tea--quite weak, but hot. It was at the end of a forty-mile walk through a monotonous country in cold, wind, and rain. We arrived tired out; and although we knew we were hungry (for we had had precious little to eat all day), the thought of food was repulsive, though the restaurant we had reached displayed a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea in the biggest teapot procurable. It was brought. We sipped I forget how many cups each. Then we supped indeed; and after supper one of the party proposed to walk the forty miles back!

* * * * *

Perhaps Dr Haig will say that plain hot water would have done just as well. Humph! Give me weak, but good, tea.

Hot milk, of course, is an incomparable pick-me-up. But who, on a trudge, can always, by demanding it, obtain hot milk? If you can get it, milk, in any shape or form, is unrivalled. More than once it has raised me from the depths of low spirits, produced by hunger and thirst and fatigue, to the most contented of moods.--I was walking once on a hot summer's day along a barren and dusty road where was no habitation nor signs of men. My knapsack was empty, so was my water-bottle. Not a brook or a stream could I find. It was late in the day. I was heart-sick and weary. But the miracle happened. Did I believe my eyes, or was that a man there milking cows over yonder in that field? I made straight for him, and, after passing the time of day and being generally polite (the while my tongue clave to my palate), I presently asked if I might have some of his priceless liquid--I called it simply "milk." Genially he pointed to a pail--a pail, and bade me help myself. I put that vessel to my lips, and I rather think that the vertical arc described by any given point on the periphery of the bottom of that utensil during the process of deglutition was not a small one! When I put that pail down (and a twenty-five-cent piece beside it) I was a new man, and laughed at miles and melancholy.

* * * * *

Very often, when walking, especially in hot weather, one finds oneself tired when only a few miles have been covered. It is not real fatigue; it is want of fluid. The skin exudes moisture; the blood thickens; the serums and synovial fluids run short; waste matter is not excreted; the muscles and tendons require lubrication. A copious draught of water will put all to rights. Not everyone knows this. I myself owe the hint to a friend.

§ 48

Each walker must, however, discover for himself what is the food best suited to his needs--remembering always that it is quite possible to spoil a whole day by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you walk to see and to enjoy, unless you possess that youth which can digest anything, and that vitality which can attack anything, take heed as to what you eat and what you attempt.--Most unfortunate is the remembrance of an otherwise lovely walk I took one day over one of the most lovely of the passes of the Jura. The day was superb; the road by the soft green pastures was superb; and superb was the climb through the tangled brushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds formed themselves to leeward of the peaks and hid the tops of the pines; above, I gazed into a deep blue sky; beneath, I gazed into a deep green vale; and a tumbling brook sent its music up the heights. But--I had started foodless, and had stuffed into my pockets only a stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By noon I was hungry. I finished the roll and the sardines. With deplorable result. The pancreas rebelled, the senses were dulled, and all the beauties of the Jura were lost upon heu me miserum!--Fellow-tramp, take thought for your provender--and "provender" good old Dr Johnson defines as "dry food for brutes."--That is the diet to walk on.

§ 49

But, after all, one's impedimenta must be chosen according to one's tastes. Mr Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his seven-hundred-mile walk from Toul to Rome with "a large piece of bread, half-a-pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the wine of Brulé" (but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!); though farther on he tells us he also carried "a needle, some thread, and a flute." But then Mr Belloc's path lay through thickly-peopled districts; he rarely slept in the open; travelled in summer-time; and not once, I think, lighted a fire: and certes he reached Rome in sorry plight.

XXII

Practical Details

§ 50

And now for some hints on the practical details of walking tours of more arduous character and more extended length.--Suit the weight of your knapsack or pack to your strength, leaving a large margin for comfort. If you travel in regions uninhabited by man, and the climate is rigorous, a shelter at night is all-important. Therefore carry a light blanket: a warm head and face induce sleep; so does a change to dry underclothing at the end of the day. For really hard trips, when you walk all day and walk far, you will need, to replace used-up muscular tissue, each day:

3/4 lb. of flour; 3/4 lb. of bacon; 1/2 lb. of beans;

--and to these you should add dried fruit or rice. The best dried fruit is a mixture in equal parts of apricots and prunes. Take an abundance of tea: nothing takes the place of tea; and supply yourself with pepper, salt, sugar, candles, and soap. Your cooking pots should fit the one into the other. These things, with a small frying-pan, an axe (to cut poles for your evening shelter and wood for your fire), a file to sharpen this, and some stout wire hooks by which to hang your pots over the fire, complete, I think, the sum-total of your absolutely necessary impedimenta.

§ 51

The sedulous, however sage, have little idea how large a part of active life depends on food. To stay-at-homes, who go down to the dining-room when the gong sounds, a meal seems a mere incident of life, an intermission from work, an opportunity for a family chat. The traveller on foot soon learns that a meal is of the most vital importance. Every reader of Nansen's thrilling narrative must have noticed this. Even in Mr Belloc's literary "Path to Rome" one is struck with the intrusion of this unliterary topic, and the more literary "Inland Voyage" of Robert Louis Stevenson is not free from it. While even in that delightful, and delightfully feminine, "An Oberland Chalet," which I have already cited, although the foods were generally cheese or cakes or petits pains, and the drinks chocolate or milk or café au lait, the mention of edibles and potables is frequent.

The importance of a supply of food has so often been borne in upon me that I am inclined to believe that the political community is coæval with the pantry. Even amongst animals, only those form commonwealths which form common stores of food--as the ant and the bee.

The pedestrian gains a practical insight into this wide-reaching influence of a storage of food. Not for half-a-dozen hours can he subsist before its importance is impressed upon him by most painful pangs. If, therefore, sedulous sage, you set out on a long hard walk without due provision for the allaying of hunger, you will come to grief. I make no apologies, accordingly, for minute instructions on that topic here.

§ 52

The bread of the Western prospector, my fraternal informant tells me, is the bannock. Dost know how to make a bannock? You must have with you a bag containing flour (of the highest grade, made from hard wheat), baking powder, and salt, thoroughly mixed beforehand. (Use twice as much baking powder as the instructions on the tin direct. Half a cupful of salt will suffice for ten pounds of flour.) Open this bag, and make a depression in the contents with your fist. Into this pour a cupful of water. Stir the sides of the depression into the water till you get a stiff dough. Spread this dough in a clean greased frying-pan. Hold the pan over the fire till the under side of the dough is slightly browned, then take the pan off the fire and set it up on edge to allow the top of the bannock to toast, and your bannock is made--and very delicious you will find it if you are hungry, and hungry you certainly will be.

Beans are a more troublesome affair, for, unfortunately, they take from two to four hours to boil. But beans are the mainstay of life on a tour. There are two good varieties: the small white, and the larger brown. Take both, and before starting clean them thoroughly from dust and grit and stones--thoroughly. As soon as your fire is lighted, put on your beans in cold water with no salt, and keep them boiling. As soon as they show signs of softening, add a piece of bacon or a ham bone and some pepper and salt. When ready--eat. If they are not ready for you when you are ready for them (and this coincidence is, alas, rare with beans), the pot should be filled up with water, the remains of the fire raked into a circle, in the centre of which the pot should be kept for the night: they will then make a dish for breakfast, when they may be eaten as they are, or can be fried. If drained fairly dry, they may be carried as they are and used for luncheon.--But the best thing is to make a bannock of them. Take a clean frying-pan with plenty of bacon fat in it, and mash the already boiled beans in this with a fork. Heat, with stirring, till the mass is dry enough to set; then fry on both sides. This will keep for days, "and is," says my authority, "the finest food I know of for emergency trips."

XXIII

The Beauty of Landscape

§ 53

May I here request the reader to accompany me in a short digression?--Few things are pleasanter than a walk in which one turns down any lane that invites.

One of the first delights of walking is the pleasure derived from the passing scene.--What is the secret of the pleasure derived from a beautiful landscape--or, as a matter of fact, from almost any landscape? For apparently a landscape need not be actually beautiful in order to give pleasure. "I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras," says Bret Harte, "with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness, for 100,000 kilomètres of the picturesque Vaud." And even Mary MacLane, rail as she did at the barren sands of Butte, Montana, in her "Story," when she left them wrote, "I love those things the best of all."--Bret Harte and Mary MacLane may give us a clue to the secret. It is not merely the contour or the colours of a landscape that delight; it is the associations that cling to it.--But what of a scene which is quite new to the eyes? Still, I think, association. "Scenery soon palls," says George Borrow, "unless it is associated with remarkable events, and the names of remarkable men." And Ruskin, you will remember, when gazing at the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain above the village of Champignole, in the Jura, found that the impressiveness of the scene owed its source to the fact that "those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue."