Eccentric Travellers
Curious stories are told of tourists being so fascinated by certain incidents in their travels as to be diverted from their purposes by finding themselves so comfortable as to wish to proceed no further—a lesson of content which is rarely lost on sensible persons.
It is told of an English gentleman, who started on a tour in 1815, the year of the battle of Waterloo, that he landed at Ostend, with the design of pushing on to Brussels, and took his place in the canal-boat that plied between Brussels and Ghent. The traveller went abroad, not merely to see foreign lands, but with the hope of meeting with illustrious personages and distinguished characters. Finding, however, that on board the trekschuit he not only fell in with many persons worth meeting, but had the opportunity of sitting down with them at the table-d’hôte, he thought he could not do better, and went backwards and forwards, never getting farther than Ghent.
Mr. Thackeray, in his Vanity Fair, gives this somewhat different version of the story:—“The famous regiment... was drafted in canal-boats to Bruges, thence to march to Brussels. Jos. accompanied the ladies in the public boats; the which all old travellers in Flanders must remember for the luxury and accommodation they afforded. So prodigiously good was the eating and drinking on board these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that there are legends extant of an English traveller, who, coming to Belgium for a week, and travelling in one of these boats, was so delighted with the fare there, that he went backwards and forwards from Ghent to Bruges perpetually, until the railroads were introduced, when he drowned himself on the last trip of the passage-boat.” Possibly the catastrophe is an embellishment.
To these ana, Mr. Sala has added the story of the Englishman, who is said to have made a bet that Van Amburgh, the lion-tamer, would be eaten by his voracious pupils within a given time; and who followed him about the continents of Europe and America in the hope of seeing him at last devoured, and so winning his stakes. Eugène Sue introduces this mythical Englishman among the dramatis personæ of the Wandering Jew.
The Russians, also, have a story of an eccentric traveller—of course, an Englishman—who posted overland, and in the depth of winter, to St. Petersburgh, merely to see the famous wrought-iron gates of the Summer Garden. He is said to have died of grief at finding the gates superior to those at the entrance to his own park at home. Add to this the lying traveller, who boasted that he had been everywhere, and who, being asked how he liked Persia, replied that he scarcely knew, as he had only stayed there a day. Note, likewise, among eccentricities, the nobleman of whom it was inquired, at dinner, what he thought of Athens during an Oriental tour. He turned to his body-servant, waiting behind his chair, and said, “John, what did I think of Athens?”
In May, 1865, died Charles Waterton, “the gentle and gifted squire” of Walton Hall, in Yorkshire, in his eighty-second year. Of this gentleman one of the most eccentric incidents in modern travel is related to have occurred in his wanderings in South America. His attendant Indian had made an instrument to take a cayman, or alligator, of Guiana, on the banks of the Essequibo river. It was very simple; there were four pieces of tough, hard wood, a foot long, and about as thick as your little finger; they were tied round the ends of a rope in such a manner that if you conceive the rope to be an arrow, these four sticks would form the arrow’s head; or that one end of the four united sticks answered to the point of the arrow’s head, while the other end of the sticks expanded at equal distances round the rope. Now, it is evident that if the cayman swallowed this, the other end of the rope (which was thirty yards long) being fastened to a tree, the more he pulled the faster the barbs would stick into his stomach. The hook was well baited with flesh, and entrails twisted round the rope for about a foot above it. Into the steep sand-banks of the river the Indian pricked a stick, and at its extremity was fixed the machine which hung suspended about a foot from the water. Mr. Waterton and his companions then went back to their hammocks for the night.
Next morning was found a cayman ten feet and a half long, fast to the end of the rope. The next point was to get him out of the water without injuring his scales. After revolving many projects, Mr. Waterton had his canoe brought round; he then took out the mast, eight feet long, and as thick as his wrist, and wrapped the sail round the end of it; he then sunk down on one knee, about four yards from the water’s edge, backed by his seven attendants, and pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope; they pulled again, and out he came. “By the time,” says Mr. Waterton, “the cayman was within ten yards of me, I saw he was in a state of fear and perturbation; I instantly dropped the mast, sprung up, and jumped on his back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that I gained my seat with my face in a right position. I immediately seized his fore-legs, and, by main force, twisted them on his back; thus they served me for a bridle.” He now plunged furiously, and lashed the sand with his tail. The people stoutly dragged him and the traveller about forty yards on the sand. After repeated attempts to regain his liberty, the cayman gave in, exhausted. Mr. Waterton then tied up his jaws, and secured his fore-feet in the position he had held them; there was still another struggle; while some of the people pressed upon his head and shoulders, Mr. Waterton threw himself upon his tail, keeping it down to the ground; and having conveyed the cayman away, his throat was cut, and dissection commenced.
This account of “catching a crocodile” was at first regarded as a “downright falsehood.” Pliny, in his Natural History, however, describes a race of men who swam after the crocodile of the Nile, “and mounted on his back, like horsemen, as he opens his jaws to bite, with his head turned up, they thrust a club in his mouth, and holding the ends of it, one in the right hand and the other in the left, they bring him to shore, as if captive with bridles.” In a rare book of plates of field sports one represents, probably from this account of Pliny, some men riding on crocodiles, and bringing them to land by means of a pole across their mouths, whilst others are killing them with large clubs. Beneath is inscribed in Latin: “Tentyra, an island of the Nile, in Egypt, is inhabited by an intrepid people, who climb the crocodile’s back, and, bridling his mouth with a staff, force him out of the river, and slay him.”
Dr. Pococke describes a method of taking the crocodile in Egypt still more like that of South America. He says: “They make some animal cry at a distance from the river, and when the crocodile comes out, they thrust a spear into his body, to which a rope is tied; they let him go into the water to spend himself, and afterwards, drawing him out, run a pole into his mouth, and, jumping on his back, tie his jaws together.” To return to the Squire of Walton Hall.
Waterton is thus characterised by a personal friend:—He was one of those men whose life, reaching back and retaining many characteristics of the past, contrasted the present sameness with a manner of life much more varied, but now almost forgotten. Rising always at three in the morning, he gave an hour, as he said, “to the health and preservation of the soul,” and was then ready for the occupations and pursuits of the day. His conversation and manners had that charm which comes of ancestry, of ancient riches, and a polished education enlivened by a sparkling wit.
In attachment to his religion he was as zealous as his great ancestor, Sir Thomas More, whose clock, from the house at Chelsea, still tells the hours at Walton Hall. His undoubting faith, and the consolations it afforded him, might, indeed, be envied by some of those who worship at other altars.
His hospitality was kind and generous: a stewed carp from the lake carried you back to the good old times, and furnished a dish not soon to be forgotten.
To those who knew him well there was something remarkably genial in the society of the good old squire, and his manner of receiving and bidding them adieu will be long remembered by his friends.
Mr. Thackeray, in The Newcomes, relates of Mr. Waterton this interesting trait:—“A friend who belongs to the old religion took me, last week, into a church where the Virgin lately appeared in person to a Jewish gentleman, flashed down upon him from heaven in light and splendour celestial, and, of course, straightway converted him. My friend bade me look at the picture, and kneeling down beside me, I know, prayed with all his honest heart that the truth might shine down upon me too; but I saw no glimpse of heaven at all, I saw but a poor picture, an altar with blinking candles, a church hung with tawdry strips of red and white calico. The good, kind W. went away, humbly saying, ‘That such might have happened again if Heaven so willed it.’ I could not but feel a kindness and admiration for the good man. I know that his works are made to square with his faith, that he dines on a crust, lives as chastely as a hermit, and gives his all to the poor.”