The Cruise of the Coyer by George Christopher Davies Travel Collection No. 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Cruise of the Coyer, taken from chapters 5 and 6 of the book Norfolk, Broads and Rivers Alton to Yarmouth We wonder how many men, with the means and opportunities of taking their annual holidays abroad, can yet say that the beauty of their own country has prevented them ever leaving it at a holiday time. For ourselves there are certain quiet spots in England, which, having once charmed us, hold us yet, as the ancient mariner held the wedding guest. Next year, perhaps, we may break the spell, but there have been many next years, during which the spell has grown stronger. Then the places we like, we have a burning desire to show our friends, and so it was that the skipper persuaded the mate to accompany him in a cruise on the Broads and Rivers of Norfolk and Suffolk. The preparations for such an expedition, where you are to be your own housekeepers, cooks, servants and general storekeepers, and where your amusements include fishing, shooting and photography are multitudinous. The skipper had made an especial point of being well found in liquids, but when the wine merchant's man placed a large array of bottles of stout and beer in the stearnsheets and left them to the mercy of the hot sun, while the skipper was cleaning out some lockers, it was rather hard lines for the latter to have to make tracks for the forepeak, to escape the fuselage of corks and fountains of foam and good liquor which attacked him in the rear. The mate looked dubiously at the pile of luggage on the cab, the tiny yacht which rode at her moorings on the Placid Lake and the minute dinghy which professed its readiness to take us on board. But notwithstanding the doubts he looked and expressed, the chaos produced by unpacking rapidly became order, as cunningly devised lockers received their contents. At last the only thing which had not a satisfactory location was the box containing the photographic apparatus which was a perpetual shinbaka during the voyage. The koya was a four-ton yacht especially adapted for single-handed sailing. She was twenty feet overall by seven feet nine inches beam with a large centreboard. She drew only two feet of water with the board up. Her cabin had three feet eight inches headroom. It does not admit of a standing position. When you want to stand, which at certain stages of dressing is advisable, you must go into the stern sheets or well, where, when at anchor, a tent is made by means of an awning over the boom. The mate called the cabin a respectable dog-canal. But by the time experience had taught him where the knocks came in when you unconsciously moved about, he had come to regard it as a spacious apartment. It certainly was uncommonly cosy, especially at night, with the lamp lit and the curtains drawn over the windows. The yacht was rigged with one large sail in a fashion and was the handiest boat possible. She was also fast, particularly in a breeze, and was just the thing for knocking about these inland waters.  Not a breath of wind called the air. The low shores were indistinct in a quivering haze, and the great bowl of the blue sky was so perfectly continued in the water beneath that the double images of yachts and boats seemed magically suspended in a hollow globe of air. The absolute stillness was only broken at times by the splashing of a shawl of grey mullet, and in a dead calm the evening drew on, and the stars were as brightly mirrored in the lake as they shone in the sky. A light breeze sprang up as we were turning into our hammocks, and as neither of us were sleepy, we listened to, and wondered at, the indescribable and mysterious noises which proceeded from ropes and spas on a breezy night. The halyards against the mast plainly, but creak, creak, rattle, rattle. And then a heavy footfall along the deck, and a platter, platter, like a dog running across. Yet there is nobody there. There is no fear of any molestation, however, so we need not be nervous. In the morning we were early astir. One does get up early in the beginning of a cruise. The fresh air is so bracing and invigorating. Besides, the early worm catches the fish. After a while, however, one has to exhort one's companion to get up by letting down his hammock. Fishing is voted slow, and early worms dirty. Then what is the good of getting up early when others get up earlier? There were guns banging away before dawn, and there were no ducks left for us, so we hunted milk and eggs instead. The skipper met with an indignity this morning. He had, with much labour and abrasions and cuts, constructed for himself a punt or dinghy of which he was very proud, and a man who was spearing for eels while waiting for a flight of fowl offered him thirty shillings for it as an eel-trunk. All that day the skipper had to take an active part in the management of a regatta on the board, and it was not until the next morning that the cruise actually began, and then we commenced a long beat against a light north-easterly breeze to Yarmouth. And now we became subject to the slavery of the photographic box. Whenever we saw a picturesque drainage windmill, a cottage and a group of trees, ancient ruins, yachts or wearies making a pretty picture. Oh, we must have that! And the yacht was run up to the bank. The mate would drag forth the big box and deposit it on the skipper's toes, and the skipper would trip up the mate with the tripod. Then the mate would do the focusing and exposing, while the skipper shewed off the two curious bullocks and cows or dispensed valuable advice. We used the dry plate process, of course, and had the plates developed when we got home. We overexposed most of them, for it seemed impossible that a second's exposure should suffice, and the skipper constantly urged, when not engaged with the cows, give it another second to make sure. Still we obtained a great number of excellent pictures, well worth all the tides and winds we lost through the constantly recurring delays. We had a friendly contest with a wary, which did not like being passed, and hugged the shore so that we could not get to winnard of her, and had to pass to Leeward, always a difficult operation, on account of their great sails shutting off the wind. Then we had a narrow escape of a smash. Hadesco Swingbridge has two openings, and we made for the windward one. Two wearies close upon our heels also made for the same, while there were some meeting wearies going through the other opening. All at once it occurred to the skipper that he would lose the wind under the lee of the bridge, and thereby lose headway, while the wearies, with their lofty canvas and great weight, would outrun the yacht and make matchwood of her. So in stentorian tones he requested them to make for the leeward opening, and they altered their course only just in time to avert the accident. The right bank of the river was a steep declivity covered with gorse, heather and fir trees, which the mate looked lovingly upon, for they reminded him of his own country. At St. Olaf's Bridge we had to lower the mast, which is a troublesome operation, and then we had a monotonous beat down the river, with the tide going out at a rare pace, until we came to Boracassel. We landed here and raced up the wooded hill with our camera to take the magnificent walls and towers of this extensive Roman fabric, and so interested were we that we spent more time there than we ought to have done, for when at last we got into brade and water we found the tide against us and the wind falling, so that we made but slow progress. It was a lovely evening, with an orange glow in the west, which was reflected back from the tanned sails of the Waries as they came up from Yarmouth with the flood, and, brightest of all, from the yellower sails of a topsoil barge from Kent. She came along in stately grandeur with her leeboards up as the wind was fair, but the lighter and faster Waries were rapidly overtaking her. Here and there was an eel-spearer in his punt, striking regularly into the soft mud, a non lifting up his spear to shake off a writhing eel. There is a hut built on an old fishing-boat, wherein dwells an eel-fisher, who is now mending his nets, or threading lobworms onto Worcesterd for the purpose of making an eel-bob. Here is a smelt-fisher, hauling in his long brown net, while his wife is picking the glittering, cucumber-smelling smelt out of the meshes. Over the great mud-flats, which at low water are visible on either side of the broad channel, the gulls, kitty-wakes and turns are wheeling, and in the intersecting streams and runlets the herons stand with a regularity of distance apart we have often noticed. Here are seven in a straight line, with a space of ten yards between each. As we near them they straighten out their long necks, then lower them horizontally, then curve and twist them in a ludicrous hesitancy, whether they shall take flight or not, perhaps flying away just when we have passed and the danger to them is over. The wind had quite died away as we reached the lower end of Braden, and the swift tide was bearing us backward. The water was too deep for us to quant our punt, too light to enable us to tow, and there seemed nothing for it but to anchor, when a man rode off from the quayside to our assistance. He knew how to cheat the tide by taking advantage of the eddies and backwaters and towed us through the bridges at the mouth of the beer, the mast being lowered, and saw us safely moored at Yarmouth Quay. The day's sail was twenty miles. We went on to the pier, but fled from its music hall unpleasantness and sought refuge in the aquarium, where we were chiefly amused by the inability of a tightly tied back young lady to sit down off a chair she had unconsciously mounted, presumably with masculine assistance. Our cosy brightly lighted cabin was, after all, the best, and thither we soon retired. The water of the river was phosphorescent, and as the tide swelled past the quay and the black bells of the vessels, it evolved shimmering lines of light and firefly sparkles. The Hundred Stream Next morning we were up at five, in order to save the two oars of flood which remained, and as there was no wind the skipper took a long tow-line ashore and towed the yacht a couple of miles away from the town. As he was panting along with his cap in his hand, his body at an angle of forty-five degrees, his feet in the mud, and the hollow in the front of his jersey showing that he was breakfastless, a barge looked on him compassionately and said, and so he calls that pleasure master. A swim and bacon and coffee put the skipper all right, but he begs to record his opinion that it is not wise to do any hard work before breakfast, nor the mate adds before or after any mail. The wind was light and from the northwest, a headwind in most of the reaches, and the beat against the tide was rather slow. The country was intensely flat and lacking in the picturesqueness of the upper waters. It was late in the afternoon when Acle Bridge, thirteen miles from Yarmouth, was reached, but that well past the river was wider, its current slower, the scenery on the banks more luxuriant, the landscape softer and more beautiful, and best of all, as we bent to the northward, the wind was fair. Creeping quietly along with the boom well out, the coyote entered the mouth of the river Thern, and while the mate sleepily stared, the skipper got out his pipeline and trailed an artificial bait behind. It was not long before he had a run, and as the yacht was brushing the reeds, he made a wild jump ashore, and after a frantic struggle with the coils of the mainsheet, whose obstructing presence he had ignored, he got right end up and finally landed a nice pike. Then the mate must go ashore in like haste with the camera, for just in front there was a farmhouse bowed in trees, a windmill and a group of peasants exquisitely mirrored in the calm water. A mile further we stopped for the night near an ill set. These ill boats are precisely like the Noah's Arcs of Childhood, and are of ancient appearance. We have never seen a new one. The tanned nets, which are hung up to dry upon stakes around the dike in which the boat is moored, are carefully kept and well mended. Through the night the ill fisher sits in his cabin like some great spider in his web, waiting for the eels the stream will bring to his net. Long usage and prescription are the rites by which these ill sets are maintained, and they are valuable properties. New ones are not likely to be established, for the anglers are jealous of the few pike and other fish, which may, though but seldom in our opinion, share the fate of the eels. The pleasure of the many is like to prove too much for the livelihood of the few, and we are sorry for it in this instance, for there is enough for all. Now the great dragnets are abolished. Talking of dragnets reminds us of a clever capture made by one watcher. He saw a party of men dragging the river one dark night, and watched them retire to their wary into the cabin of which they entered, shutting the doors to keep in the tell-tale light. Now these doors are fastened by a bar on the outside, and the watcher stealthily boarded the wary and slipped the bar into its sockets, securely entrapping the men until he returned with assistance. In the morning we passed Hayen Bridges, and scanned the wide expanse of reed and water in search of the masts of a friend's yaw, which we had appointed to meet hereabouts. There to the left are two masts rising into the blue sky out of a forest of green, and after many devious turns we enter Kendall Dyke, and round to opposite the Nymphia, whereon are a parson and a captain. They are in sore straits, and we are only just in time to rescue them from the fate of drinking water, for they are reduced to the villainous and undrinkable compound sold as beer in Norfolk villages. We transferred ourselves and sundry bottles to their yacht, and made them happy. Figuratively speaking they were knee-deep in fish, caught that morning in hayam sounds. Great silver-sided roach and crimson-finned rud lay in their jolly boat. Eels played hide-and-seek among the bottom boards, worms wriggled on the seats, and grains, boiled rice and wheat lay about in profusion. You cannot go fishing in Norfolk without these elements of a mess. Of course you must not lose your way amongst them. A large apron is an essential part of the angler's costume. After lunch we sailed up the deep clear dyke, which presently opened out into the expanse of water and reed known as hayam sounds. Then narrowed again between its reed forests to open out again into white-slee, then contracted once more to finally merge in the glorious waters of Hickling. The broad is four hundred acres in extent, but seemed much larger, for its glittering waters were bounded by low and indistinct shores, looking in the summer haze more like thin banks of mist or cloud resting on the water than a boundary of land. A huge why lay on the lake, written in massive posts which marked the channel, the latter branching into two, one leading to Catfield and the other to Hickling Stath. In the channel even we touched the bottom with a centreboard at times, but when we haul it up we can sail anywhere over the broad, and it is a singular sensation that of sliding quickly over green weed beds and golden spaces where the weeds have not taken root, and with only thirty inches of water. Before the introduction of centreboards, the yachts used on Hickling were beamy shallow boats, drawing only two feet of water, and lateen rigged. Their remains lie pretty thickly on the banks, where they have been hauled up and abandoned. The long flat boats used by the marshmen and reed-cutters are not rowed, but are set along with a setting pole after the fashion of the Thames punting. They often startle you by shooting out of a dike, when you fancy you are all alone with the fish and the wildfowl. In the winter, Hickling Broad is a rare place for coots, which gather there in abundance, and a day's coot-shooting each year is a time-honoured institution in which numbers of boats take part. The crew of the yaw had returned to their fishing on the sounds, and we ran the coia in and dropped the anchor in three feet of water. When we were tired of catching roach, we got a live bait out for a pike, and caught a very large perch immediately. As a rule, we did not fish much on our crews, because we did not know what to do with the fish we caught. We couldn't eat bushels of rod and scores of pike, so we contented ourselves with catching a few when we lay two in the evening. This day, and indeed every day, we were astonished at the number of hawks which were always visible hovering over the marsh. Kestrels, marsh harriers, and hen harriers would be in sight together. Often they let us come quite close to them as they perched on the top of some reed-stack or cock-of-the-course marsh hay, a recent gorge probably being the cause of their disinclination to move. The skipper watched one hen harrier from a hiding place within ten yards, noting how the sun glinted off his blue-gray back. Occasionally a crow or a pair of pee-wits would make a spirited attack upon one, and there would be many rapid wheels and turns and clatter of wings, ere one or other of the combatants sheared off.  If you pick a lily-leaf, by the way, you will often find it pierced by small holes, and on the under-edge of these holes are the eggs of some insect, laid three parts round like a horseshoe. When the coyote was tired of fishing she spread out her great white wing an essay to leave the broad, but which way? The skipper had not taken his bearings as he came on, and the wind had shifted. So, after a sile round by reeds of bewildering similarity of grouping and passages which seemed but to end in reeds, he had to ask the captain and the parson, which is the way out. And on their making mock of him he charged the thinner spelt of reeds and by good hap emerged into the dike. Then we sailed back into the thern with the yaw presently following and sailed up with a wind which from now always seemed to be fair until we came to Martham Ferry. Here the river is made artificially narrow and a huge raft, long enough to stretch from one bank to the other, is kept in a recess on either side and is drawn across when any one requires to use it. If the raft is on the other side of the river the wayfarer must wait until someone approaches on that side. And in that lonely neighbourhood this may be a long time. Now men were busy carting hay and they had left the ferry across so the yachts had to lie too while two of the crew swung the great mass aside. Just beyond the ferry both yachts moored to the bank close together and both crews passed the evening together the parson telling witty stories and the captain singing Van de Decken with a bull as an interested hearer. The animal had strayed past the yachts along the narrow strip of firm land on the other side of which was an impossible bog. Now the lamps were lit he was afraid to come back again past the boats and was an unwilling prisoner charging anybody who went to shore unarmed with a mop or other implements of defence but drawing back when he came to a ray of light he kept lowing threateningly and was rather a nuisance as he stood mounting guard a few yards away. That night the skipper and the mate sat up late changing their photographic plates in the darkened cabin lit only by a dim red light. Just as they finished there was a great noise on deck what is that bull coming on board? cried the mate and we bolted out of the cabin armed with a dagger and a pistol which were two of the ornaments of the cabin but the bull was on shore whence his eyes gleamed in the darkness the skipper had left his rod on the cabin top and his line in the river with a live bait attached and now the line was being pulled out and the big wooden reel was thumping about on deck something monstrous was on but if it were a pike it was a very sluggish one in the dark it was ticklish work landing it and in the midst of the excitement the captain came picking his way along the ronde clad in his night attire and knee boots by the light of a candle we found that the fish was a large eel the largest we had seen it had taken a good size live bait at midwater we ultimately got it into the landing net and kept it there until morning when the captain undertook the cooking of it it was cut into chunks par boiled and then fried and five of us ate it for breakfast we had no means of ascertaining its weight but at a guess it was five pounds the next morning the bull was in the same spot within ten yards of the yachts which he was afraid to approach although he was not in the least afraid of any person who emerged from the vessels onto the bank we felt sure he would have passed us in the night and it was rather a nuisance to have so pugnacious a spectator all that glorious august day we were very lazy we walked into the village of Martham to buy provisions we fished and caught more roach perch and pike than we wanted we photographed, bathed and explored various long and lily dikes and the lonely sheet of water known as Summerton Broad but all in the most leisurely and lounging way it is possible to conceive the wind was fair for every way we wished to sail and was soft and fragrant with the hay then being carried there was no one visible and no sign of human life as far as the eye could reach except occasionally when from some opening in the reeds a large boat piled up with hay a floating stack hiding at support was piled by two or three men the coarse marsh hay used principally for fodder is cut and piled up by the banks of the dikes and is then carried by boats to some convenient spot where it is unloaded to await a further removal to the stack the picturesque nature of this method of hay carrying is further heightened by the costume of the haymakers some time ago this part of the country was inundated with straw hats said to be Chinese having enormous brims and sold for a penny apiece these now form the usual summer headgear of the laborers on the marshes a large yellow straw hat with a broad red ribbon round it a blue jersey and great thigh boots form the haymaking costume on the Martham dikes the men have good-looking faces with long pointed beards and are usually tall and spare serious cast of countenance befitting the loneliness of their occupation the usual routine of the day was this at seven o'clock the skipper would awake and would, other persuasions failing let down the hammock of the mate to induce him to rise then the awning was turned back the bedding put upon the cabin top to air the cabin cleared and the kettle set to boil while the skipper and mate bathed and made their morning toilet then one of us went to the nearest farm for milk and eggs while the other fried the bacon or fish and made the coffee breakfast over came the task of washing up and stowing away scrubbing the decks and tidying by which time it would be ten o'clock then sailing and exploring until evening when came dinner or tea then a quiet evening's fishing reading and talking and finally hammocks at ten and a sound sound sleep till morning that night we moored by a steam drainage mill and we inspected the machinery surely there must be some better way by raising the water from the lower level of the drains to the higher level of the river than the turbine wheel which is everywhere used this is a narrow wheel of great diameter with floats like those of a steamer's paddle wheel it revolves in a narrow trough to which the drain water has free access and dashes the water up to the higher level many of the older mills and indeed many if not most of the houses by the rivers lean one way or another through the sinking of the foundations in soft earth like Holland this is a country of leaning walls a tall tower of one of the mills on the Waverney lately rebuilt used to lean over in a most remarkable manner with the apparent defiance of the laws of gravitation End of The Cruise of the Coyer Gullmark by Sir Francis Young Husband travel collection one this is a Libydox recording all Libydox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit Libydox.org Gullmark what will be one day known as the playground of India and what is known to the Kashmiris as the meadow of flowers is situated 26 miles from Srinagar half way up the northward facing slopes of the Purr Panjul there is no other place like Gullmark originally a mere meadow to which the Kashmiri shepherds used to bring their sheep cattle and ponies for summer grazing it is now the resort of 6 or 700 European visitors every summer the Maharaja has a palace there there is a residency and hotel with a theatre and ballroom post office telegraph office club and more than 100 huts built and owned by Europeans there are also golf links two polo grounds a cricket ground four tennis courts and two croquet grounds there are level circular roads running all around it there is a pipe water supply it may be soon there will be electric light everywhere and yet for 8 months in a year the place is entirely deserted and under snow like Kashmir generally Gullmark also is said by those who know it in the old days to be now spoilt with increasing numbers of visitors with the numerous huts bringing up year by year in every direction with the dinners and dances it is said to have lost its former charms and it is believed that in a few years it will not be worth living in my own view is precisely the opposite I knew Gullmark 19 years ago and it certainly then had many charms the walks and scenery and the fresh bracing air were delightful where now our roads there were then only marandering paths what is now the polo ground was then a swamp the foe of the golfer was unknown all was then Arcadian simplicity nothing more thrilling than a walk in the woods or at most a luncheon party was ever heard of and doubtless this simplicity of life has its advantages but it had also its drawbacks man cannot live forever on walks or at the charming and however fascinating his companion may be his soul yearns for a ball of some kind whether it be a polo ball a cricket ball a tennis ball a golf ball or even a croquet ball until he has a ball of some description to play with he is never really happy so now that a sufficient number of visitors come to Gullmark to supply subscriptions enough to make and keep up really good golf links polo grounds etc I for my part think Gullmark is greatly improved I think further that it has not yet reached the zenith of its attractions it is the Gullmark of the future that will be the really attractive Gullmark when there is money enough to make the second links as good as the first to lay out good rides down and around the march to make a lake at the end to stock it with trout and to have electric light and water in all the huts when a good hotel and a good club with quarters for casual bachelor visitors have been built all this is straying far from the original Arcadian simplicity but those who wish for simplicity can still have it in many of a valley in Kashmir at Somenarg, Pargam or Tragbal and numerous other places and the advantage of Gullmark is that the visitor can still if he choose be very fairly simple he can go about in a suit of putto he need not go to a single dance or for electrical performance or dinner party or play a single game he need not speak to a soul unless he wants to he can pitch his tent into a remote end of the march and he can take his solitary walks in the woods but if after a while he finds his own society is not after all so agreeable as he had fought if he feels a hankering for the society of his fellows male or female and if he finds the temptation to play with some ball is irresistible then just under his nose is every attraction he can indulge his misanthropic inclinations at will not a turn in those inclinations he can plunge into games and gaiety to his heart's content the main charm of Gullmark will however always remain the beauty of its natural scenery and the views of the Great Peak Nanga Parbat, 26,260 feet above sea level and 80 miles distant across the valley the march or meadow itself is a flowery saucer shaped hollow under a mountain 13,000 feet high and bounded by a ridge directly overhanging the main valley of Kashmir it is 8,500 feet above sea level open and covered with flowers and soft green turf but on all sides it is surrounded by forests of silver fur interspersed with spruce, blue pine, maple and a few horse chestnuts and the great attraction is that through these forests the stately graceful furs the most superb views may be had first over the whole length and breadth of the veil of Kashmir then along the range of snowy mountains on the north and at a culminating pleasure to the solitary Nanga Parbat which stands out clear and distant above and beyond all the lesser ranges of longing so it seems to a separate and pure world of its own and there is a further attraction in the Goldmark scenery that is ever changing now clear and sufficed in brilliant sunlight now the bottle ground of monsoon storms and now again street with soft fleecy vapours abaved in haze and colour no two days are alike and each point of view discloses some new loveliness round the outside of the ridge runs what is known as the circular road it has the advantage of being perfectly level and is fit for riding as well as walking accept the road through the tropical forests near Darjeeling along which I rode on my way turned from Tibet and which runs for miles through glorious tropical vegetation by immense broad-leaved trees with unknown names all festooned with creepers and lighted with orchids by great tree therns wild bananas and a host of other treasures of plant life and through which glimpses of the mighty Kinjinjanga 28,250 feet could be caught except that I know of no other more beautiful road than this along the ridge of Goldmark from it one looks down through the welfare forest onto the valley below intersected with streams and water channels dotted over with wooded villages and covered with rice fields of emerald green onto the great river winding along the strength of the valley to the Wula Lake at its western end onto the glinting roofs of Shurnuga onto the snowy range on the far side valley and finally onto Nanga Parbat itself and neither for two days together is this glorious panorama exactly the same one day the valley will be filled with a sea of rolling clouds through which gleams the sunshine light up the brilliant green of the rice fields below above the billowy sea of clouds long-level lines of mist will float along the opposite mountain sides above these again will rise the great mountains looking inconceivably high and above all will soar Nanga Parbat looking at sunset like a pearly island rising from an ocean of ruddy light on another day there will be not a cloud in the sky the whole scene will be bathed in a bluey haze through the many vistas cut in the forest the eye will be carried to the foothills sloping gradually toward the river to the little clumps of pine wood the village clusters of walnut, pear and mulberry the fields of rice and maize to the silvery reaches of the jellum winding from the Wula Lake to Baramula to the purpley blue of the distant mountains then onto the bluey white of Nanga Parbat sharply defined yet in colour neatly merging into the azure of the sky and showing out in all the greater beauty that we see it framed by the dark and graceful pines in which we stand and this forest has no mean attractions of its own of which to my little girl the chief were the white Columbines here also I found purple Columbines Dauphemians what are known as white slipper orchards yellow violets balsams mauve and yellow primulas protentellas anemones jacos ladder monk shawd salvias many graceful ferns and numerous other flowers of which I do not pretend to know the name the residency is situated on the summit of the ridge above the circular road a formate can be seen not only Nanga at Parbat through a vista cutting the trees and the main valley but also a lovely little side valley known as the ferrozerba nulla looking straight down two thousand feet through the pine trees we see a mountain torrent whose distant rumbling mingles soothingly with the sighing of the pines brilliant green meadows on which a few detached pine trees stand gracefully out here and there line the river banks steep hillsides mostly clad in gloomy forest rise on either hand but relieved by many patches of grassy sunlit slope the spurs become a deeper and deeper purple as they recede the openings in the forests become wider higher on the mountainside where the avalanches have scarred them more frequently higher still the forest line is passed and the little stream is seen issuing from its source along the snow fields and flowing over enticing grassy meadows above the glistening snow fields rise is a rugged peak of the perpangel which when it is not set against the background of intense blue sky is the butt of raging storm clouds the most beautiful time in Gaulmark is in September when the rains are over and the first fresh autumn nip is in the air then from the summer house in our garden in the early morning the feast of my eyes and Nanga Parbat was a perpetual delight it was the very emblem of purity, dignity and repose day after day it would appear as a vision of soft pure white in a Gauls-like haze of delicate blue too light and too ethereal for earth but seemingly a part of heaven a vision which was a religion in itself which diffused its beauty throughout one's being and evoked from it all that was most pure and lovely the foreground in this autumn month was also worthy of the supreme subject of the picture through the pines the couches of sunlit meadow fresh and green with long shadows of the trees thrown here and there across them intensifying the effect of the sunlight the groups of cattle the gentle streaks of mist floating on the edge of the woods the cheerful twittering of the birds the soothing hum of the bees and insects the crowing of crock-cocks the rippling sound of running water and then looking toward a parwatt the brilliant sunshine brightening the emerald grass of the marge the patches of yellow flowers the little mirandering streams the pretty chalet huts peeping up from the edge of the trees the background of dark furs and pines getting lighter as they emerge into the bluey haze of the distance the fresh green meadows over the limit of the pines the snow fields, the rocky peaks and above all the clear blue liquid sky all this gave a setting and an atmosphere which fitly served as an accompaniment to this most impressive of nature's works On the Tibet Road by C. E. Beckhoffer Travel Collection 1 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Anita Sloma Martinez On the Tibet Road After I had spent some time exploring the delights of Kashmir I joined a couple of English friends who were about to undertake a journey along the road that leads into Tibet We had, of course, no intention of following the road to its limit but we anticipated an interesting trip through the heart of the Himalayas We started off one day from the end of the Woolar Lake with a little company of servants and ponies the latter bearing our supplies on their backs After two days we had definitely left the valley of Kashmir behind and were well into the mountains After climbing a great deal we passed beyond the altitude where the last trees grow We came out of a fragrant pine forest upon a great wide shoulder of a snow field We could hardly bear to look at the mountains so dazzling was the snow upon them and we had to put on our snow goggles A well-worn line of tracks showed the road and another rising more directly and steeply through the snow, the shortcut We trudged up the shorter way pressing the soft flakes beneath our feet into little lumps of ice Sometimes they melted away under us and we slipped down the cold moist slope and now and then we fell up to our wastes through the crust of a concealed ice-hole The worst was that we were exposed all the time to the heat of the tropical sun which burned our bodies despite the surrounding expanses of snow and it was melting the snow to such an extent that we never knew how to walk At one step our feet would fall through deep into the snow, the next would hold firm and the next would drop us into our wastes It was a wearisome business The ponies with our baggage we need uneasily as their legs slipped across the ice or fell into the dips The six pony men, one to each three horses led them on with a monotonous cry of HUSH KUBADAR HUSH BE CAREFUL HUSH KUBADAR But at last we reached the summit of our first serious pass and knew that we were definitely on the famous Gilgit Road I know no road like the Gilgit Road A path that winds through the pine woods of Kashmir crosses in far away valleys scores of rivers and little streams by stepping stones or rude bridges of logs or even a single unsmooth tree trunk and grips its way through the steep slopes of everlasting snow despite blizzards, mist and avalanches until at last it comes to the desolate distant little outpost of our Indian Empire where it meets the Russian and Chinese frontiers Up and down this road the postmen have to scramble in all sorts of weather carrying the daily post to Gilgit by two mile relays Sometimes we found the road lying across an ice field underneath which a stream tunneled its way Then the road and the stream would come out into sight criss-crossing each other by dangerous little ice bridges Then we would come to pine forests where we would find our camp pitched near a clear stream from which we would drink meeting their wild-looking men from the remorder valleys true Mongolian and Tibetan types In fur-lined push-to-coats and round woolly caps flocks of sheep and goats would be feeding there tended by little shepherd lads In one valley a horrible icy wind seemed to be blowing continuously across the plowlands where the three-day sun blazed down on the boulders and the dazzling white blocks of quartz We camped there for three days beside the river near a crazy wooden bridge the whole center section of which rested unfastened on the two abutments in order that, in a flood it might be immediately swept away without wrenching the foundations which were securely buried in the banks After the flood the sides again Then we moved up the valley to a place more shelter from the wind by the mountains We pitched camp beside a wooden mosque under some mighty elms The mosque was pagoda-roofed and walled with smoothed logs and lattice windows It stood in an untended garden full of weeds and wildflowers and enclosed by a high fence A dozen ragged white flags waved on a platform and strips of cloth and paper were tied across the doorways Within was a saint's tomb made of rounded stone and covered with a dingy awning A few days after we left this place I lost my nerve It came about in this way We had been marching along the valley for a few hours on smooth turf crossing by insecure bridges of tree trunks many streams of melted snow dashing down the nulahs As I came out above a village I saw the servants pitching our camp on a small grassy meadow that jutted out from the mountainside I started to cross a steep, bare slope towards them in order not to have to descend to the village and then climb up again to the tents Halfway across the path I had taken began to narrow and at last it split into two or three goat tracks on none of which I could hope to find a foothold with my stiff-rush sandals I stood there leaning against the slope barely supported by the pressure of my instep on a ledge hardly an inch broad My other leg hung loose I tried to turn and get back along the path but as I moved my foot slipped off the ledge and I found myself lying flat on the steep face of the slope Below me it ran a sheer down three or four hundred feet to the stony riverbed where the tossing river dashed against the timbers of the little bridge that led across to the wooden houses of the village There was nothing to clutch but rare and vain blades of grass I tried to dig my fingers into the soil but it was too hard nor could I do anything but press my bare knees and elbows hard against the slope I knew that if I relaxed my pressure I should slide down the hillside in an instant I had no fear at all for I did not believe it possible to die then with my cheek rubbing the soil I shouted and at once I saw a man in the village far beneath come out of his house by one of its little shuttered openings look up and immediately rush off to my rescue He came tearing up the wall of rock leaping barefooted like one of his goats Sahib Sahib he screamed with tears of excitement running down his face then I felt as if I were slipping appallingly slowly not by distance but so to speak by degrees of relaxation I clung looser and looser still I could not dig a grip with my fingernails soon I must slip a twentieth of an inch then a quarter then an inch and a hundred feet the man came up nearer with hideous grimaces and cries I thanked heaven he was a villager and not a timid Kashmiri of the town my knees went at last and with a scrape my body tautened my elbows came away from the soil and just as my whole body commenced to move the villager reached me and clasped me firmly by the hand barefooted I followed the path supporting me with his grip as I clambered back to it and along to the road Sahib he sobbed this is not a path for sandals looking down I found that my friends and one or two of our Kulis had started to run to my rescue but none of them could possibly have reached me in time I had never doubted yet my nerve was gone and I took a walk in the narrow places when I started over them alone one of our marches led us through uncharted valleys and we found that the usual estimate of the mileage of the route was badly out instead of 16 miles as we had thought we found we had to walk 28 a very considerable distance in a country where the sun makes all movement nauseous from eight to fourteen thousand feet above sea level impedes easy breathing at all times. Marching is difficult and often dangerous in the snow, and at nightfall one would not dare to move a step. This march finished our coolies, who refused to go on. Climbing a hill over our camp, they stood there in a row with uplifted arms and cursed us with a long rising wail, after which they sat down and made themselves a camp for the night. At dawn they silently departed, having arranged with the people of a neighboring village to take over their job and to pay them their share out of the total amount received. We started off next day with our new coolies, and found a long climb before us, which it was imperative to finish before noon, lest the afternoon should bring a storm and catch us in the heights. I was given the thankless task of bullying and blarneying the coolies into making all possible speed, and I discharged my duty at the expense of my strength, my wind, and if the coolies repeated prayers had any effect, my soul's fate, and that of all my ancestors and descendants. However, we made camp in good time and weather, and the coolies forgot their troubles and sang folk songs to me to show that they forgave me. Two nights we camped on a bare patch of earth, surrounded by miles of snow, while nearby the rushing Muschki River serpentined its way through the broad level strip of ice, deep in snow, that was soon to be all melted into one mighty river. There were no trees, only a few rare stumps of rotting wood. Yet strangely we often heard the cuckoos monotonous cry, and by their chilly boroughs down through the snow, brown furred marmots watched us, sitting on their haunches and mourning each other with shrill bird-like cries. The third night we reached a village that consisted of one building. A few Tibetans and their dirty children were sitting on its broad spacious roof, which was only three or four feet above the surrounding earth. Inside was a big excavated chamber, where they, and their numerous herds of goats and bullocks, slept in airtight promiscuity. Their chief aid to agriculture was so plentiful that one of my companions remarked, I have camped in running water, I have camped on the summit of a mountain, and on the side of a precipice, but never, never have I camped in a dung heap. The two miles beyond this fragrant spot occupied us several hours, for an avalanche had destroyed the path, and we and the coolies endured some exciting rock climbing and crossing of snow bridges that often bent and sometimes broke. Then at last we got down out of the snow and trudged through a dry-hot valley. We passed by Mushki and three or four other villages, each with its carefully enclosed treasure, two or three shriveled leafless juniper trees. When a decayed mud-fort came into sight, and a couple of small brick buildings and two or three mud-huts, this was Dross, which the Tibetans called hem-bubs. There was a young lieutenant of the guides in camp at Dross, bearded like the pard, and so were we, for who dares shave in that climate, and full of brilliant military inventions. We spent the evening chatting in his tent and rested at Dross with him the next day. Then he went on Central Asiawards. At Dross we saw the first caravan of the year passing through to Central Asia. A slender apricot-cheeked Yarkondi merchant was traveling with a score of ponies laden with stores for those desolate regions whose very names we hardly knew.  There were also many uncouth little parties coming in from Yarkond. From one I bought a quantity of dried Ladakh fruits, but I bargained in vain for some curious wooden bowls of which they ate.  We now set out to return to Kashmir. Our route lay through the Zoge Pass, which is the link between Kashmir and Central Asia. The pass has this peculiarity, that though it lies above a big ascent from Kashmir, there is no drop at all on the other side, but the valley winds along quite levally from dross. We came up to it in a day and traversed its difficult snows early the next morning. The summit of the almost ungraded snow field can only be observed by the traveller by watching the direction in which the streams flow. Just at the watershed we met a high official of Ladakh, travelling with a large and picturesque retinue in palanquins and undecorated ponies. We began to descend to civilization again, and at last we came to a path nearly free from snow, cut in the rock cliff of a winding gorge lofty and bare. We were reaching the point, famous throughout Asia, where the caravans exhausted with their long marches through the Ladakh steppes win their first glimpse of the beauties of Kashmir. The path led through occasional soft masses of snow to projection in the bare treeless rock. It was as bare in a spot as any we had traversed. We turned the dingy corner and cried out in delight for there, stretching beneath us were the green mountains and meadows, sparkling streams and sunny banks of flowers of the famous Sindh Valley. Despite a contrast with the accursed nulah of Gujrind and the deep, soft snow of the Zogipass, we hastened down the wide circling path to the flowers and meadows and the bubbling streams and the shade of the mighty green amphitheaters of Deodars, enjoying them all as if we had never seen such lovely things before. For the tribe has been of Central Asia coming here for the first time, it must seem a paradise. Our journey was over, two long marches through the lovely valley, a mad twenty-mile dash on a little village pony with a blanket for a saddle, two holes in it for stirrups and a bridle of rope, a dark midnight paddle by dark canals and lakes, and early one morning I woke to find myself beside my houseboat on the broad Jilum, a mile above Srinagar, no more for us the heat of the sun and the furious winter's rages, no more the leafless junipers and the soft, deep, treacherous snow. Now I might lie beneath the plain trees and gaze over the sunny wheat that the distance snows, and my only curse was Bilsabab and his million-winged subjects. End of On the Tibet Road A Visit Inverse to Hale Maomao by Frank Cohen Travel Collection 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anita Sloma Martinez A Visit Inverse to Hale Maomao I sit upon the good ship's quarter-deck in silent, self-secluded reverie. I'm using barnacle upon the back of a Pacific, sulfur-bottom whale. I like a simile, especially when it involves me in a grotesque guise, as children love to look in wrinkled mirrors and see themselves as mannequins and monsters. Now noting happily in the sky a stern, the sooty albatross with outspread wings, shaped like a scythe or the crescentic moon, sweep, swirl, and pirouette, as if it were the curve of beauty avafied upon, the pallet of the painter of the sea. Now in the sea a beam, the shadow of a roving shark, its pointed dorsal fin, uprising from the rippling surface like the black flag of a dreaded pirate craft on the horizon heaving into sight. Anon, ahead, a startled flying fish, with glassy wing-like fins rise from the sea and wing a gleaming scintillating flight in the bright sunshine for a moment, then sink in the all-concealing ocean like a fact that rises from the salt, salt sea of common place, and flits a fancy in a sunshine of mime-using for a time. The length of the first kiss of lovelings then sinks in the ocean of oblivion. Until oh-ho the ship is anchored in the bay of Hilo, and behold the Isle Hawaii, a long-buried age and climb in miniature of the revolving earth, when the first cooling crags of its great mass of molten matter whirling from the sun appeared above the cinders of the sea, within the fire-free gasses of the air and the first forms of vegetable life, the lichen, moss and fern began to weave a sink-chirp for the newborn planet Eve, Hawaii, Ai, a mimic infant earth, mulling and puking in the nurse's arms. All mounted on a sinewy fresh-shot horse, as sure of foot as a clip-climbing goat, I jog along a narrow rugged path, worn in the lava by my predecessors, and bringing back to mind the real worn rut within the lava pavement of Pompeii. Now turning to the right to note the flood that came from mighty Mauna Loa's mouth four years ago. A flood of molten lava, in self-encasing arteries of slag, descending slope, ravine and precipice, a deluge of destruction pouring down resistless, a Niagara of fire, and staying not until approaching Hilo, full forty miles from its volcanic source, the Princess Ruth of ancient faith appeared, and sacrificing raiment, meat and drink unto the goddess of her heathen sires, the dreaded Pele, fire personified. The flood of fire was turned to solid stone, and so remains, in attestation of the power of Pele and the faith of Ruth, to all the world unto the end of time, in black appalling overwhelming waves upon the edge of the uninjured town. But out upon this shaping of the world to fit our fancies' whims, conceits and dreams till self-deluded we believe in them as entities outside our simple selves and worship them as gods of good and evil. Instead of shaping our ideas, thoughts and fantasies to fit the world of fact, the entities of our environment within the reach and rapture of our senses. Now turning to the left, to note a fern among the leafy wonders of the isle, a circle of unbroken, arching fronds, full thirty feet from tip to tip, above a drapery of drooping, lifeless leaves around the trunk of their supporting tree, a crown unto the forest chieftain's head, and to his face a murmur's mask as well. Now holding a straight course amid a copse of such resplendent and luxuriant growth, I seemed to sit again in a canoe and drifted down the mighty Amazon, a speechless wonderer among its palms, transformed into its vast and very burns, a marvel here, full forty feet in height, and two in width across its tree-like trunk. Another there, the feathers of the rock of Sinbad, metamorphosed into prongs, a renon within a scrubby wilderness in which the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the hog, the dog, the cat, and chicken have wandered back into their primal state of savagery before the wit of man subordinated them unto his will, until at length, born over thirty miles of lava in unnumbered curious forms, swirled, hummocked, pitted, caverned, creased, laughed, cragged, fretted, bulged, rent, fluted, rolled, and crushed, and lifted up some forty hundred feet above the level of the circling sea. I checked my jaded horse upon the brink of an abyss a hundred fathoms deep, and in circumference, three leaks or more, the compound cauldron of Kilauea, the counterfeit presentment at my feet in planetary objectivity of the volcanic moon above my head, in interstellar sheen and mysticism, was ever revelation unto man more wonderful, as if I had in fact the moon beneath a microscopic lens, its orb expanded twenty thousand times, and every pockmark in its seeming face enlarged into an isle engulfing pit, the silver in the heavens draws on earth, black, broken, ragged, jagged, furnace slag, I, looking into Kilauea, I behold the moon as gulliver among the brobding nags the charms of plumdall clitch. Descensis facilis haverni, so the way into the depths of Kilauea, from crag to crag, with alpine stock in hand, and Virgil, as he traverse tell with Dante beside me in the guise of a canaca, I pass into the fire-formed slag-walled chasm. Now noting on the brink of the abyss a fringe of interwoven ferns and roses, recalling to my mind the floral wreaths around the bald skulls of Palermo's dead, and the allurements of the limner's art upon the house-walls of Pompey's vice, now coming to the great crescented plain that forms the northern portion of the pit.  But all in vain, I stoop and eat, but stay not. Now coming to a second-level plain that forms the floor of Kilauea proper, I leave the line of life and all is death. I walk upon the surface of a sea, as black and still, though broken into waves and swirling eddies, curling crests and surf, as if it were the floods of Acheron tossed by a tempest to the highest notch, and in that instant frozen into ice, a mere deglass of glassy, glossy lava, the spangled with the dust of olive-ine, in golden points and iridescent hues, as I have seen the sea at midnight start in streaming with prismatic living light, that of the phosphorescent Acolytes. Anon, amid the fumes and gasses from a score of vents, and in the scorching heat emitted from two glowing, flaming chimneys, eclipsed the little beggars, in their throats great diphtheretic clots, depending, like stalactites in a limestone cave. I pause, uncertain, hesitating, fearful, lest the crust of lava break beneath my feet, as happily it has done a thousand times, and in the liquid fire I perish, like empedocles within the flood of Etna. I pause, but for a moment then proceed, by fear's head-sport, dispelled in the delight of apprehended, imminent destruction, until Etling, a leak of lava, traversed, and a great bragged, rock-like reeking rim, in the similitude of an immense cathedra-pile in smoking, toppling ruin. Ascended and descended, I recoil a step, and stand transfixed in awe and wonder. I am within the trembling, steaming walls of Kilauea's center, and behold the lake of liquid lava, Palae-Mau-Mau, in shape elliptical, and in circuit half a mile, in ragged lines obscured by steam. The surface of the molten mass, a scum, like sable satin, ever setting from the center, and in crinkling laps and folds and crunching volutes, breaking on the shores, here parting and revealing through a rent the liquid fire beneath, in bands and seams of interblending pink and cherry red, there heaving in elastic billows and in vast concentric circles eddying, to parting in a swaying arc an ooze of glowing lava, pink and orange-hued, appears, and like a worm of unxious fire upon a deep black velvet leaflet, writhes until, with fading colors, it expires. Here parting on the shore surfs crinkling crust, a myriad of jets of bluish flame leap from the sharp uplifted fracture, like a fringe of blue upon a funeral pawl, there cracking suddenly from shore to shore, the liquid fire appears along the line, like lurid lightning in a midnight sky, and see that jet of water gas escape and carry with it in the air a spurt of lava in the form of glassy floss as fine as ever spun by China's worm. Alok be like from Pele's grizzled pawl, and hear the surface rocking, swirling, till dissolving, low within the circle formed, a fount of fire, the solid central cones uprising twenty feet, the spluttering spurts as many more and falling with the sound of roof snow passing into pavement slush, a fount of fire assuming various forms, a trident now, and now a spreading tree, a headdress now, and now a devil fish, but ever of one hue the rare compound of pink and orange bound within the folds of the pomegranate's dainty filmy bloom, or in the rounded lips of one among ten thousand bare-haired blue-eyed girls, a solid color without tint or shade, and though composed of seeming lambent fire emitting strangely no more light than sound, a dob and splotch of a pomegranate red upon a sable ground and nothing more, and there against a vertically cut half cone upon the margin of the lake, the surface setting in pulsating throbs until behold a miniature volcano combining the phenomena of both Vesuvius and Halimamo, an eruptive shower of lava falling on the half cone on the shore, and a cascade returning to the source from which it came, and so the scene is ever buried and disjoined until behold the lava lake is all aglow and twenty fountains play within the wondrous circle of its shores. Oh, for the word to compass in its sound the seething, surging, spouting sea of fire, it is a mighty maelstrom ladle dipped from out the ocean cauldron of the sun. Aye, Halimamo is the orb of day within the circuit of a half a mile, and in my journey hither to this lake within the walls of Pilauea and the foam-fringe confines of Hawaii, I, in philosophic fact, have visited the earth emerging from its primal floods, the moon, a cold beyond poor tom's degree, and the inspired volcanic fire, the sun. Oh, glorious age of glass, of lens and prism, that purr-blind man with comprehensive gaze may see the far and near, the near afar, and poets and philosophers compound their facts and fancies in resultant truth. Anon, the rubber of a cloudy night, erases all the world, save that within the walls of Halimamo in my sight and hearing. Lava-lighted, crater-crags, in arching like the petals of a great corolla, tinted yellow, pink and blue, thin clouds of water-gas, obscurely white, and fumes of sulfur as obscurely blue ascending from the circle of the lake, an incense from a thousand unseen sensors, and in the surface of the lava lake the satin sable turned to velvet black and the pomegranate red transmuted to the glowing yellow hue of molten gold, a fitful light diffusing from the founts, illumining weirdly the volcanic void without or shade or sheen, the only gleam upon the velvet scum a shimmering reflection from the vapor clouds above, until the periodic break-up come the surface for a moment is a glare, a sunburst through a darkening tempest's rack and then a sunset in a golden glamour. I sit upon a lava-rock and watch the varying phases of the wondrous lake until the real passes from my sight and the ideal enters in its stead. The thing I thought within my musing mind, the fact of fancy in my reverie, the world of wonders of the fire abyss, a filmy breath-blown bubble of the brain. I pass into the being of Macbeth, and lo, in looking into Halle-Mau-Mau, I look into the witch's cauldron, see the eye of Newt and Toa-Prov descend into the seething hell-brop to compound of the diabolic charm. The while I hear in the cascading of the fiery founts the bubble-bubble of toil and trouble of the mystic mumbling of the midnight haze. Anon, I creep up to a pitfall's brink within the jungle of a bengal veil, and through the broken reeds across the chasm behold the livid black and yellow bands and glaring eyes of an imprisoned tiger, abyss that startled at my coming, leaps from wall to wall so swiftly and fiercely that it seems in my bewildered sight to be expanded to the compass of the pit. The while I hear a low-deep growl that shakes the mountain walls around me to their base. Anon, I enter Rome, imperial Rome, and one among a hundred thousand press into the Colosseum and conduct me to a seat once looking down I see in the arena eighty feet below a thousand goth and gallic warriors with sword and shield and gauge in battle-strike to know no pause nor end until I see the flashing blades of steel oak bounce of blood, and then the battlefield a sea of gore, and here a dying moan hushed in the cheer of the encircling, surging blood-crazed throng. Anon, I listen to a murderer, repentant in the throes and dread of death, recount the story of his awful deeds at midnight done with an unfeeling blade, until I seem to see betwixt his ribs the hell of Halai Maumao in his heart, its friars eternal to his sinful soul, consuming yet consuming knuck for I. Anon, I see the goddess, Paley, rise amid the fountains of the fiery lake, a black-skinned bloated blood-shot breastless hag, around her neck a lay of leprous sores, and in her hands a fire-charred newborn babe torn from a fruitful mother's dripping dug, and strangled in the hate of barrenness unto all things that mate and multiply, a hag so horrible in form and feature, a hag so terrible in aim and action, a hag so hellish in her head and heart, no eye can see nor fantasy can see save in the walls and fires of Halai Maumao. End of A Visit Inverse to Halai Maumao A Brief History of the United States by John Bach McMaster Travel Collection 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Chad Horner from Balli Clare in County Hunter, Northern Ireland, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. A Brief History of the United States by John Bach McMaster, Chapter 1, The New World Find The New World, of which our country is the most important part, was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492. When that great man set sail from Spain on his voyage of discovery, he was seeking not only unknown lands but a new way to eastern Asia. Such a new way was badly needed. The routes of trade, long before Columbus was born, the people of Europe had been trading with the Far East. Spices, drugs and precious stones, milks and other articles of luxury were brought, partly by vessels and partly by camels from India, the Spice Islands, the Cathay, China, by various routes, to Constantinople and the cities in Egypt, and along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, where they were traded for the copper, tin and lead, coral and woolens of Europe, and then carried to Venice and Genoa, whence merchants spread them over all Europe. The merchants of Genoa traded chiefly with Constantinople and those of Venice with Egypt. The Turks seized the routes of trade, while this trade was at its height. Asia Minor, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, was conquered by the Turks. The Caravan routes across that country were seized, and when Constantinople was captured in 1453, the trade of Genoa was ruined. Should the Turkish conquests be extended southward to Egypt, as later they were, the prosperity of Venice would likewise be destroyed, and all existing trade routes to the Orient would be in Turkish hands. The Portuguese seek a new route, clearly an ocean route to the east was needed, and on the discovery of such a route, the Portuguese had long been hard at work, fired by a desire to expand Portugal and add to the geographical knowledge of his day, Prince Henry, the navigator, sent out explorer after explorer, who pushing down the coast of Africa had almost reached the equator before Prince Henry died. His successors continued the good work, the equator was crossed, and in 1487, Dias passed the Cape of Good Hope and sailed eastward till his sailors mutinied. Ten years later, Vasco de Gamma sailed around the end of Africa, up the east coast, and on to India, and brought home a cargo of eastern products. A way to India by water was at last made known to Europe, Columbus plans a route. Meanwhile Christopher Columbus planned what he thought would be a shorter ocean route to the east. He had studied all that was known of geography in his time. He had carefully noted the results of recent voyages of exploration. He had read the travels of Marco Polo, and had learned that off the coast of China was a rich and wonderful island, which Polo called Cipango. He believed that the earth is a sphere, and that China and Cipango could be reached by sailing about 2500 miles due westward across the Atlantic. Columbus seeks aid. To make others think so was a hard task, for nearly everybody believed the earth to be flat, and several foreigners were appealed to a 401 was found bold enough to help him. He first applied to the King of Portugal, and when that failed to the King and Queen of Spain. When they seemed deaf to his appeal, he sent his brother to England, and at last, wearied with waiting, set off for France. Then Queen Isabella of Spain was persuaded to act. Columbus was recalled, ships were provided, with which to make the voyage, and on Friday, the 3rd of August 1492, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina set sails from Palos on one of the greatest voyages ever made by men, the voyage westward. The little fleet went first to the Canary Islands, and then, due west, across the Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic was called, the voyage was delightful, but every sight and sound was a source of new terror to the sailors, and the eruption of a volcano at the Canaries was watched with dread as an omen of evil. They crossed the line of no magnetic variation, and when the needle of the compass began to change its usual direction, they were sure it was bewitched. They entered the Great Sargasso Sea and were frightened out of their wits by the strange expanse of floating vegetation. They entered the zone of the trade winds, and as the breeze day after day steadily wafted them westward, the boldest fear it would be impossible to return. When a mirage and flights of strange birds raised hopes that were not promptly realised, the sailors were sure they had entered an enchanted realm land-discovered. Columbus, who was above such fear, explained the unusual sights, calmed the fears of the sailors, hid from them the true distance sailed, and steadily pursued his way till unmistakable signs of land were seen, a staff carved by hand, and a branch with berries on it thotted by. Excitement now rose high, and a reward was promised to the man who first saw land. At last, on the night of October 11, Columbus beheld a light moving as if carried by hand along a shore. A few hours later, a sailor on the pinta saw land distinctly, and soon all beheld a few miles away along low beach. The voyage among the islands, Columbus thought he had found one of the islands of the Indies, as the southern and eastern parts of Asia were called, dressed in scarlet and gold, and followed by a band of his men, bearing banners he landed, fell on his knees, and having given thanks to God, took possession for Spain and called the island San Salvador, which means Holy Savior. The day was October 12, 1492, and the island was one of the Bahamas. After giving red caps, beads, and trinkets to the natives who tried it about them, Columbus set sail to explore the grip, and presently came in sight of the coast of Cuba, which he at first thought was Chapango. Sailing eastward, landing now and then to seek for gold, he reached the eastern end of Cuba, and soon beheld the island of Haiti. This so reminded him of Spain, that he called it Hispanolia or Little Spain, the first Spanish colony in the New World, when off the Cuban shore, the Pinta deserted Columbus. On the coast of Haiti, the Santa Maria was wrecked. To carry all his men back to Spain in the Little Nina was impossible, such therefore as were willing were left at Haiti and founded La Nividad, the first colony of Europeans in the New World. This done, Columbus sailed for home, taking with him ten natives and specimens of the products of the lands he had discovered. The voyage home, the Pinta was overtaken off the Haitian coast, but a dreadful storm parted the ships once more, and neither again saw the other till the day went, but a few hours apart, they dropped anchor in the haven of Palos, once they had sailed seven months before. As the new spread, the people went wild with joy. The journey of Columbus to Barcelona was a triumphal procession. At Barcelona he was received with great ceremony by the king and queen, and soon afterward was sent back with many ships and men to find a colony and make further explorations in the Indies. Other voyages of Columbus. In all Columbus made four voyages to the New World. On the second, 1493, he discovered Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and other islands. On the third, 1498, he saw the mainland of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco River. On the fourth, 1502 to 1504, he sailed along the shores of Central America. Returning to Spain, he died per neglected and brokenhearted in 1506. Columbus believed he reached the Indies. To his dying day, Columbus was ignorant of the fact that he had led the way to a new continent. He supposed he had reached the Indies. The lands he discovered were therefore spoken off as the Indies, and their inhabitants were called Indians, a name given in time to the copper-coloured natives of both North and South America. Spain's claim to newfound lands. One of the first results of the discoveries of Columbus was an appeal to the Pope for a bull securing to Spain the heathen lands discovered. For a bull had secured to Portugal the discoveries of her mariners along the coast of Africa. Pope Alexander VI accordingly drew a North and South line 100 leagues west of the Cape Birdie Islands, and gave to Spain all she might discover to the west of it, reserving to Portugal all she might discover to the east. A year later, 1494, Spain of Portugal by treaty moved the line of demarcation to 370 leagues west of the Cape Birdie Islands, map page 20, and on this agreement approved by the Pope, Spain rested her claim to America. End of chapter 1 by John Bach McMaster. This recording is in the public domain. This is an excerpt from the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 13, called Old Scenes Revisited, 1856. Travel Collection 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Michel Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in July 2019. Old Scenes Revisited, 1856. After leaving Paris, Mrs. Stowe and her sister, Mrs. Perkins, traveled leisurely through the South of France toward Italy, stopping at Amine, Lyon, and Marseille. At this place, they took steamer for Genoa, Leghorn, and Savita Vigia. During their last night on shipboard, they met with an accident, of which, and their subsequent trials in reaching Rome, Mrs. Stowe writes as follows. About eleven o'clock, as I had just tranquilly laid down in my birth, I was roused by a grating crash accompanied by a shock that shook the whole ship and followed by the sound of a general rush on deck, trampling, scuffling, and cries. I rushed to the door and saw all the gentlemen hurrying on their clothes and getting confusedly toward the stairway. I went back to Mary, and we put our things on in silence, and as soon as we could, got into the upper salon. It was an hour before we could learn anything, certainly, except that we had run into another vessel. The fate of the Arctic came to us both, but we did not mention it to each other. Indeed, a quieter, more silent company you would not often see. Had I had any confidence in the administration of the boat, it would have been better, but as I had not, I sat in momentary uncertainty. Had we then known, as we have since, the fate of a boat recently sunk in the Mediterranean by a similar carelessness, it would have increased our fears. By a singular chance an officer whose wife and children were lost on board that boat was on board ours and happened to be on the forward part of the boat when the accident occurred. The captain and mate were both below, there was nobody looking out, and had not this officer himself called out to stop the boat, we should have struck her with such a force as to have sunk us. As it was, we turned aside and the shock came on a paddle wheel, which was broken by it, for when, after two hours delay, we tried to start and had gone a little way, there was another crash and the paddle wheel fell down. You may be sure we did a little sleeping that night. It was an inexpressible desolation to think that we might never again see those we loved. No one knows how much one thinks and how rapidly in such hours. In the Naples boat that was sunk a short time ago, the women perished in a dreadful way. The shock threw the chimney directly across the egress from below so that they could not get on deck, and they were all drowned in the cabin. We went limping along with one broken limb till the next day about eleven, when we reached Civitavichia, where there were two hours more of delay about passports. Then we, that is, Mary and I and a doctor Edison from Philadelphia, with his son Alfred, took a carriage to Rome, but they gave us a miserable thing that looked as if it had been made soon after the deluge. About eight o'clock at night, on a lonely stretch of road, the wheel came off. We got out and our postilians stood silently regarding matters. None of us could speak Italian, they could not speak French, but the driver at last conveyed the idea that for five francs he could get a man to come and mend the wheel. The five francs were promised, and he untackled a horse and rode off. Mary and I walked up and down the dark, desolate road, occasionally reminding each other that we were on classic ground and laughing at the oddity of our lonely starlight promenade. After a while, our driver came back, tag, rag, and bobtail at his heels. I don't think I can do greater justice to Italian customs than by this respectable form of words. Then there was another consultation. They put a bit of rotten timber under to pry the carriage up. Fortunately, it did not break, as we all expected it would, till after the wheel was on. Then a new train of thought was suggested. How was it to be kept on? Evidently they had not thought far in that direction, for they had brought neither hammer nor nail, nor tool of any kind, and therefore they looked first at the wheel, then at each other, and then at us. The doctor now produced a little gimlet, with the help of which the broken fragments of the former lynchpin were pushed out, and the way was cleared for a new one. Then they began knocking a fence to pieces to get out nails, but none could be found to fit. At last another ambassador was sent back for nails. While we were thus waiting, the diligence in which many of our ship's company were jogging on to Rome came up. They had plenty of room inside, and one of the party, seeing our distress, tried hard to make the driver stop, but he doggedly persisted in going on, and declared if anybody got down to help us, he would leave him behind. An interesting little episode here occurred. It was raining, and Mary and I proposed, as the wheel was now on, to take our seats. We had no sooner done so than the horses were taken, with a sudden fit of animation, and ran off with us in the most vivacious manner. Tag Ragon Company shouted in the rear. Some heaps of stone, a little in advance, presented an interesting prospect by way of a terminus. However, the horses were lucidly captured before the wheel was off again, and our ambassador, being now returned, we were set right, and again proceeded. I must not forget to remark that at every post where we changed horses and drivers, we had a pitched battle with the driver for more money than we had been told was the regular rate, and the carriage was surrounded with a perfect mob of ragged shock-headed black-eyed people whose words all ended in eno, and who raved and ranted at us till finally we paid much more than we ought to get rid of them. At the gates of Rome, the official, after looking at our passports, coolly told the doctor that if he had a mind to pay him five francs, he could go in without further disturbance, but if not, he would keep the baggage till morning. This form of statement had the recommendation of such precision and neatness of expression that we paid him forthwith, and into Rome we dashed at two o'clock in the morning of the ninth of February, 1857, in a drizzling rain. We drove to the hotel d'Angleterre, it was full, and it did owe to four or five others, and in the last effort our refractory wheel came off again, and we all got out into the street. About a dozen lean ragged Corbis, who are called porters and who are always lying and wait for travelers, pounced upon us. They took down our baggage in a twinkling and put it all into the street, and surrounded it and chattered over it while M and I stood in the rain and received the first lessons in Italian. How we did try to say something, but they couldn't talk anything but in inno, as aforesaid. The doctor finally found a man who could speak a word or two of French, and leaving Mary, Alfred and me, to keep watch over our pile of trunks, he went off with him to apply for lodgings. I have heard many flowery accounts of first impressions of Rome. I must say ours was somewhat somber. A young man came by and addressed us in English, how cheering we almost flew upon him. We begged him, at least, to lend us his Italian to call another carriage, and he did so. A carriage which was passing was luckily secured, and Mary and I, with all our store of boxes and little parcels, were placed in it out of the rain, at least. Here we sat, while the doctor from time to time returned from his wanderings, to tell us he could find no place. Can it be, said I, that we are to be obliged to spend a night in the streets? What made it seem more odd was the knowledge that, could we only find them, we had friends enough in Rome who would be glad to entertain us. We began to speculate on lodgings. Who knows what we may get entrapped into? Alfred suggested stories he had read of beds placed on trap doors of teasters which screwed down on people and smothered them, and so, when at last the doctor announced lodgings found, we followed in rather an uncertain frame of mind. We alighted at a dirty stone passage, smelling of cats and onions, damp, cold and earthy. We went up stone stairways, and at last we're ushered into two very decent chambers where we might lay our heads. The Corbys all followed us, black-haired, black-browed, ragged and clamorous as ever. They insisted that we should pay the pretty little sum of twenty francs, or four dollars, for bringing our trunks about twenty steps. The doctor, modestly but firmly declined, to be thus imposed upon, and then ensued a general chatteration. One and all fell into attitudes, and Enos and Isimos rolled freely.  So we made a truce for ten francs, but still they clamored, forced their way even into our bedroom, and were only repulsed by a loud and combined volley of no-no-no's, which we all set up at once upon which they retreated. Our hostess was a little French woman, and that reassured us. I examined the room, and seeing no trace of treacherous teasters or trapdoors resolved to avail myself without fear of the invitation of a very clean white bed where I slept till morning without dreaming. The next day we sent our cards to Monsieur Bartholomew, and before we had finished breakfast he was on the spot. We then learned that he had been watching the diligence office for over a week and that he had the pleasant set of apartments we are now occupying already and waiting for us. March the first. My dear husband, every day is opening to me a new world of wonders here in Italy. I have been to the catacombs where I was shown many memorials of the primitive Christians, and today we are going to the Vatican. The weather is sunny and beautiful beyond measure, and flowers are springing in the fields on every side. Oh my dear, how I do long to have you here to enjoy what you are so much better fitted to appreciate than I. This wonderful combination of the past and the present of what has been and what is. Think of strolling leisurely through the forum, of seeing the very stones that were laid in the time of the Republic, of rambling over the ruined Palace of the Caesars, of walking under the Arch of Titus, of seeing the dying Gladiator and whole ranges of rooms filled with wonders of art all in one morning. All this I did on Saturday and only wanted you. You know so much more and could appreciate so much better. At the Palace of the Caesars where the very dust is a mélange of exquisite marbles, I saw for the first time an acanthus growing and picked my first leaf. Our little menage moves on prosperously. The doctor takes excellent care of us and we of him. One sees everybody here at Rome, John Bright, Mrs. Hemmins son, Mrs. Gaskell, etc., etc. Over 5,000 English travelers are said to be here. Jacob Abbott and his wife are coming. Rome is a world. Rome is an astonishment. Papal Rome is an enchantress. Old as she is, she is like Nignon d'unclos. The young fall in love with her. You will hear next from us at Naples, affectionately yours, HBFs. From Rome the travelers went to Naples and after visiting Pompey and Herculaneum made the Ascent of Vesuvius, a graphic account of which is contained in a letter written at this time by Mrs. Stowe to her daughters in Paris. After describing the preparations and start, she says, Gradually the Ascent became steeper and steeper till at length it was all our horses could do to pull us up. The treatment of horses in Naples is a thing that takes away much from the pleasure and comfort of such travelers as have the least feeling for animals. The people seem absolutely to have no consideration for them. You often see vehicles drawn by one horse carrying fourteen or fifteen great stout men and women. This is the worst as the streets are paved with flat stones which are exceedingly slippery. On going uphill the drivers invariably race their horses urging them on with a constant storm of blows. As the Ascent of the Mountain became steeper the horses panted and trembled in a way that made us feel that we could not sit in the carriage. Yet the guide and driver never made the slightest motion to leave the box. At last three of us got out and walked and invited our guide to do the same. Yet with all this relief the last part of the Ascent was terrible and the rascally fellows actually forced the horses to it by beating them with long poles on the back of their legs. No Englishman or American would ever allow a horse to be treated so. The Hermitage is a small cabin where one can buy a little wine or any other refreshment one may need. There is a species of wine made of the grapes of Vesuvius called Lachryma Christi that has a great reputation. Here was a miscellaneous collection of beggars, ragged boys, men playing guitars, balling donkey drivers and people wanting to sell sticks or minerals, the former to assist in the Ascent, and the latter as specimens of the place. In the midst of the commotion we were placed on our donkeys and a serious pensive brooch smoothed away. At last we reached the top of the mountain and I gladly sprang on firm land. The whole top of the mountain was covered with wavering wreaths of smoke from the shadows of which emerged two English gentlemen who congratulated us on our safe arrival and assured us that we were fortunate in our day as the mountain was very active. We could hear a hollow roaring sound like the burning of a great furnace but saw nothing. Is this all, I said? Oh no, wait till the guide comes up with the rest of the party and soon one after another came up and we then followed the guide up a cloudy rocky path the noise of the fire constantly becoming nearer. Finally we stood on the verge of a vast circular pit about 40 feet deep the floor of which is of black ropey waves of congealed lava. The sides are sulfur cliffs stained in every brilliant shade from lightest yellow to deepest orange and brown. In the midst of the lava floor rises a black cone the chimney of the great furnace. This was burning and flaming like the furnace of a glass house and every few moments throwing up showers of cinders and melted lava which fell with a rattling sound on the black floor of the pit. One small bit of the lava came over and fell at our feet and a gentleman lighted his cigar at it. All around where we stood the smoke was issuing from every chance rent and fissure of the rock and the Neapolitans who crowded around us were every moment soliciting us to let them cook us an egg in one of these rifts and overcome by persuasion I did so and found it very nicely boiled or rather steamed though the shell tasted of globbers salt and sulfur. The whole place recalled to my mind so vividly Milton's description of the infernal regions that I could not but believe that he had drawn the imagery from this source. Milton as we all know was sometime in Italy and though I do not recollect any account of his visiting Vesuvius I cannot think how he should have shaped his language so coincidentally to the phenomena if he had not. On the way down the mountain our ladies astonished the natives by making an express stipulation that our donkeys were not to be beaten why they could not conjecture the idea of any feeling of compassion for an animal is so foreign to the Neapolitans thoughts that they supposed it must be some want of courage on our part when once in a while the old habit so prevailed that the boy felt he must strike the donkey and when I forbade him he would say courage senora courage time would fail me to tell the whole of our adventures in southern Italy we left it with regret and I will tell you sometime by word of mouth what else we saw we went by water from Naples to Leghorn and were gloriously seasick all of us from Leghorn we went to Florence where we abode two weeks nearly two days ago we left Florence and started for Venice stopping one day and two nights in route to Bologna here we saw the great university now used as a library the walls of which are literally covered with the emblazoned names and coats of arms of distinguished men who were educated there Venice a great trouble of traveling in Europe or indeed of traveling anywhere is that you can never catch romance no sooner are you in a place than being there seems the most natural matter of fact occurrence in the world nothing looks foreign or strange to you you take your tea and your dinner eat drink and sleep as a four-time and scarcely realize where you are or what you are seeing but Venice is an exception to this state of things it is all romance from beginning to end and never ceases to seem strange and picturesque it was a rainy evening when our cars rumbled over the long railroad bridge across the lagoon that leads to the station nothing but flat dreary swamps and then the wide expanse of sea on either side the cars stopped in the train being a long one left us a little out of the station we got out in a driving rain in company with flocks of Austrian soldiers with whom the third class cars were filled we went through a long passage and emerged into a room where all nations seemed commingling Italians Germans French Austrians Orientals all in wet weather trim soon however the news was brought that our baggage was looked out and our gondolas ready the first plunge under the low black hood of a gondola especially of a rainy night has something funerial in it four of us sat cowering together and looked out of the rain dropped little windows at the sides at the scene gondolas of all sizes were gliding up and down with their sharp fishy-looking prowls of steel pushing their ways silently among each other while gondoliers shouted and jabbered and made as much confusion in their way as terrestrial hackman on dry land soon however trunks and carpet bags being adjusted we pushed off and went lighting away up the grand canal with the motion so calm that we get scarce discern it except by the moving of objects on shore venice labelle appeared to as much disadvantage as a beautiful woman be draggled in a thunderstorm lake komo we stayed in venice five days and during that time saw all the sights that it could enter the head of a valet de plus to afflict us with it is an affliction however for which there is no remedy because you want to see the things and would be very sorry if you went home without having done so from venice we went to malan to see the cathedral and leonardo da vinci's last supper the former is superb and of the latter i am convinced from the little that remains of it that it was the greatest picture the world ever saw we shall run back to roam for holy week and then to paris roam from lake komo we came back here for holy week and now it is over what do you think of it certainly no thoughtful or sensitive person no person impressable either through the senses or of religious feelings can fail to feel it deeply in the first place the mere fact of the different nations of the earth moving so many of them with one accord to so old and venerable a city to celebrate the death and resurrection of jesus is something in itself affecting whatever dispute there may be about the other commemorative feasts of christendom the time of this epic is fixed unerringly by the jews Passover that great and solemn feast therefore stands as an historic monument to mark the date of the most important and thrilling events which this world ever witnessed when one sees the city filling with strangers pilgrims arriving on foot the very shops decorating themselves in expectancy every church arranging its services the prices even of temporal matters raised by the crowd and its demands he naturally thinks where for why is all this and he must be very careless indeed if it does not bring to mind in a more real way than before that at this very time so many years ago christ and his apostles were living actors in the scenes thus celebrated today as the spring was now well advanced it was deemed advisable to bring this pleasant journey to a close and for mrs stow at least it was imperative that she return to america end of section 12 old scenes revisited by harry to beat your stone