Chapter XXVIII Around the World in Eighty, Sixty-Seven, and Sixty Days 1870, 1890, 1892
I went around the world in eighty days in the year ’70, two years before Jules Verne wrote his famous romance, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours, which was founded upon my voyage. Since then I have made two tours of the world, one in sixty-seven and a half days, and the other in sixty. The last voyage still stands as the record trip in circling the globe.
I have always been something of a traveler, restless in my earlier years, and never averse to visiting new scenes and experiencing new sensations. In Australasia I had improved every opportunity to see the new world of the South Seas, and later had visited every part of the Orient that I could by any possibility reach during my various journeys in that portion of the globe. Europe I had traversed quite thoroughly, from the Crimea to Nijnii Novgorod, from the Volga to the Thames, from Spain to Finland. When I left Australia it was my intention to establish a great business in Yokohama, and, when that had been done, I intended to pass on across the Pacific, thus girdling the globe; but my first effort to go around the world was prevented by the war in the Crimea, and so I turned back and came home, as already described, by way of China, India, Egypt, and Europe.
The desire for travel possessed me mightily in ’69, just after the golden spike was driven at the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, by which California and New York were made nearer one another by many days of travel. The circumference of the globe had been shrunken. I wanted, naturally, to be the first man to utilize the great advantage thus given to travel by making the quickest trip around the world.
After closing my lecture tour on the Pacific coast in the spring and summer of ’70, I prepared for such a trip, carefully calculating that it could be made within eighty days, even with the inevitable losses due to bad connections at different ports. I wanted to take my sons, George and Elsey, with me, but, at the last moment, they were prevented from going. I found out only a few days ago, when accusing my daughter Sue of keeping them in Newport, that their mother had given them ten golden eagles each not to go. I sailed from San Francisco August 1, ’70. On the same ship was Susan B. King, whom I found in San Francisco waiting to sail, as she was tired of the way her affairs were going in New York and wanted a long trip for rest and recreation. She had $30,000 with her, which she said she would try to invest profitably on the voyage. She was then quite an old woman, as the world generally estimates age.
I made Yokohama in very good time, and went immediately to the Japanese capital, the new seat of the Emperor, Tokyo. I may record here a very curious thing. I believe I was the last man—the last foreigner, at least—who had taken part in an old national custom of Japan, by which persons of opposite sex bathe together, without bathing suits. It was then considered, in that land of good morals and fine esthetic sense, that no impropriety was involved in this custom. Manners and customs there were open and free as in Greece, when Athens was “the eye of Greece” and the center of the world’s civilization. I went to one of the public baths to experience a decidedly new sensation. I was allowed to bathe with old men and women, young men and maidens—and no one, except, perhaps, myself, felt any degree of embarrassment or false modesty.
But the fact that a foreigner was bathing in this way with Japanese women and girls made something of a stir in Tokyo that had been unexpected by me. It seems that, a short time before, some Englishmen had gone into one of the public baths and made themselves very offensive. This had taught the Japanese that they could not trust the foreigner, and they had already nearly decided to exclude foreigners from their baths, or to separate the sexes. My experience was, therefore, the last, as I believe. After this the sexes were not permitted to bathe together.
I observed that the Japanese used small paper packages for tea, thus making it convenient to handle tea. I then recalled the custom of the Chinese in compressing tea for transportation by caravan to the great Fair of Nijnii Novgorod. Here was an opportunity, I thought, and I suggested to Susan B. King that she might invest her $30,000 to good purpose in sending to New York a cargo of tea put up in little paper packages, and that, if she wanted to try it, I would give her letters to men in Canton who could arrange the matter for her. She undertook the scheme, and I wrote a description of it for Anglin’s Gazette, in Yokohama. The tea was shipped to New York, and was handled at the Demorest headquarters. The tea was in half-pound and pound packages. This was long before Sir Thomas Lipton employed this method of putting up teas.
At Saigon, in French Cochin-China, I met the United States ship Alaska; and from that port sailed on a ship of the Messagerie Imperiale line for Marseilles. The remainder of the voyage was uneventful, except for the diversion just before we left Singapore of hearing the news of the fall of the Second Empire, the defeat of Louis Napoleon at Sedan, and the establishment of the republic.
I have already recorded, in the chapter on the Commune in France, my arrival at Marseilles and my experiences in the brief period of my visit. After I had been arrested and liberated, and had had my interview with Gambetta at Tours, I passed on rapidly to New York, and finished my tour of the world inside of eighty days.
My second trip was made in the year ’90. I planned it while I was in jail in Boston for a debt that I did not contract. There had been some note-worthy efforts on the part of newspaper writers to make a record-breaking trip, and Miss Bisland had gone around in seventy-eight days, while Nellie Bly had succeeded in making the voyage in seventy-three days. I proposed to Col. John A. Cockerill, of the New York World, who had sent Nellie Bly on her trip, to make the circuit in less time; but he did not care to upset the World’s own record. I then telegraphed to Radebaugh, proprietor of the Tacoma Ledger, that if he would raise $1,000 for a lecture in Tacoma, I would make a trip around the world in less than seventy days. He told me to come on.
As I started West, to sail on the Abyssinia, I received message after message from Radebaugh. Instead of the $1,000 I had asked for, $1,500 had been subscribed by the time I reached Chicago, and at St. Paul it had gone up to $3,500. I soon reached Tacoma, and lectured there to an immense audience, taking in $4,200, the largest amount ever paid for a single lecture—and sailed out into the Pacific March 18th. I was accompanied by S. W. Wall, editor of the Ledger. Lafcadio Hearn, the distinguished writer, was on the same ship, on his way to Japan. He was so ill that he did not leave his state-room during the voyage.
We made Yokohama in sixteen days, and the moment I landed I telegraphed to the American legation at Tokyo to get me a passport. It had always taken three days to get a passport, but I said that I must have this at once, and I got it. In seven hours I was on the way to Kobe, overland, three hundred miles across Japan. I caught the German ship for Nagasaki, from which point, after a short delay, I sailed for Hongkong. In a trip of this kind, of course, one sees little of interest. It is a mere question of rushing from vessel to vessel the moment you get into port, or of catching trains, or of chartering boats to bridge gaps, or of haggling with ship-captains or railway managers about getting extra accommodations at very extra prices.
My longest delay was at Singapore, where I lost forty hours. The next longest loss of time was in New York—wonderful to relate—where I was delayed thirty-six hours, although four railways were competing for the honor of taking me across the continent on a record-breaking journey. I arrived on Saturday, and had to charter a special car—which cost $1,500—and could not get away until Monday morning. I was near being delayed a day at Calais, France, but succeeded in chartering a boat to take me over the Channel. As this boat carried the British mails, I was relieved of the expense by the British Government.
At Portland I met with a most annoying delay of five hours, due entirely to mismanagement. This most unexpectedly lengthened out my tour at the very end, and so angered me that I refused to attend a banquet the people had prepared for me. I pushed on to Tacoma as soon as I could get anything to carry me, and arrived there exactly sixty-seven days, thirteen hours, two minutes, and fifty-five seconds from the time I had started. The actual time of traveling was fifty-nine days and seven hours. Seven days and five hours had been lost. This was then the fastest trip around the world. It has been beaten since by myself.
As I had started on my second trip from a Pacific coast point, there was a good deal of rivalry among the growing towns in that section with regard to the honor of being the starting-point of my third trip in ’92, in which I eclipsed all previous records. I had already announced that this could readily be done, as the Pacific steamships were very much faster than they had been at the time of my former voyage, and as the connections at various ports were much better. Sir William Van Horne had also written that he wanted me to make another tour of the world, using one of the fast ships of the Canadian Pacific road, the famous Empresses, that soon would be put on the line to Yokohama. The new town of Whatcom, on Puget Sound, in the extreme northwest of Washington, raised the amount necessary for the trip, and I made my start from that point, catching the Empress of India from Vancouver.
An account of this voyage would necessarily be only a panoramic glance at a narrow line around the world. I made Yokohama in eleven days, was at Kobe, Japan, in thirteen, and at Shanghai in fifteen. Here I had some difficulty in finding a fast steamer for Singapore, but succeeded in getting aboard a swift German boat, the Friga, which put me in Singapore in time to catch the Moyune, the last of the fast tea ships, and on her I sailed as far as Port Said, through the Suez Canal. At Port Said I boarded the Ismaila for Brindisi, Italy. Then I again rushed across Europe, and caught the Majestic at Liverpool for New York. I found a distinguished company on board, including Ambassador John Hay, D. O. Mills, Lady Stewart, Mrs. Paran Stevens, and Senator Spooner.
I arrived in New York in good time, had a very slight delay in comparison with that of my second voyage, and went flying across the continent to Whatcom. The entire trip, giving a complete circuit of the globe, was made in sixty days.
To these three trips I attach no more importance, I hope, than is fairly their due. In each of them, in succession, I had beaten all previous records of travel; and this was something in the interests of all persons who travel, as showing what could be done under stress, and as a stimulus to greater efforts to reduce the long months and days consumed on voyages from country to country. But they were, as I consider them, merely incidents in a life that has better things to show. One of these voyages, the one in which I “put a girdle round the earth” in eighty days, has the honor of having given the suggestion for one of the most interesting romances in literature. This, at least, is something.
But I give this brief account of my voyages, at the end of my autobiography, chiefly because I regard them as somewhat typical of my life. I have lived fast. I have ever been an advocate of speed. I was born into a slow world, and I wished to oil the wheels and gear, so that the machine would spin faster and, withal, to better purposes. I suggested larger and fleeter ships, to shorten travel on the ocean. I built street-railways, so that the workers of the world might save a few minutes from their days of pitiless toil, and so might have a little leisure for enjoyment and self-improvement. I built great railway lines—the Atlantic and Great Western, and the Union Pacific—that the continent might be traversed by men and commerce more rapidly, and its waste places made to blossom like the rose. I wished to add a stimulus, a spur, a goad—if necessary—that the slow, old world might go on more swiftly, “and fetch the age of gold,” with more leisure, more culture, more happiness. And so I put faster ships on the oceans, and faster means of travel on land.
My own rapid tours of the world are, therefore, typical of my life. Thus an account of them seems to round it off fitly with a “Bon voyage” to every one.