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The Happy Traveller: A Book for Poor Men

by     Frank Tatchell    (1923)

The Real Fun of Travelling

The real fun of travelling can only be got by one who is content to go as a comparatively poor man. In fact, it is not money which travel demands so much as leisure, and anyone with a small, fixed income can travel all the time.

The beaten track is often the best track, but devote most of your time to the by-ways. In no other way can you so quickly reach the heart of a country. Yet though I would have you do much of your journey by road, get a zest for travelling by railways. Just being in a train and rushing on to somewhere is extraordinarily nerve-soothing. Besides, a train goes through out-of-the-way places and enables you to surprise many intimate sights which you would miss from the highway. The track usually follows river valleys and a distraction can be found on a long journey in shooting the rapids in an imaginary canoe or in fishing likely pools. When there is no river, I take the hedges and ditches on a dream horse, or pretend that I am an airman and spot good landing places.

When I have to wait for a train, I amuse myself by scribbling down a list of the collective words in which our language is so rich, e.g., a pack of hounds, a shoal of fish, a peal of bells. There are about a hundred of them, but I can seldom think of more than fifty or sixty. Or I make out a list of what I consider to be really first-rate books of travel. How few there are! I begin with these :

Here I pause to weigh the claims of such books as ‘Tom Cringle’s Log,’ the ‘Cruise of the “Falcon,”’ and ‘Two Years before the Mast’; and, thinking the list is getting too nautical, I return ashore with Stevenson’s ‘Travels with a Donkey,’ Curzon’s ‘Monasteries of the Levant,’ and Ford’s ‘Gatherings from Spain.’ Then the train comes in.

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Should you be attacked by a mob . . . hurt one of the crowd and hurt him quickly. The others will gather chattering round the injured man and you will be able to slip away. If attacked by one man, hold your umbrella round the top of the ribs and meet his charge with a thrust to the belly or throat. If you have a stick, hold it just below the handle and let him have it, not on the head, but on the collar bone an inch or so away from the neck. Keep your hand low so as not to hit the pad of muscle behind the collar-bone, and stand as in fencing with the right foot forward. Other vulnerable places are the outside of the forearm, the tip of the shoulder, and . . . the shins. When the man has a knife and you have time, get your coat and wrap it round the left wrist as a pad, leaving part of it dangling. If you are camping when attacked, leap away from the fire into the dark and keep still. To catch the faintest sound, keep your mouth open, for our ear has an inward entrance as well as an outer, like the gill which gave it origin. If you have a companion and want to wake him without his speaking, press with your finger under his ear.

But I hope none of these alarming things will happen to you. You are much more likely to be attacked by a dog. The mongrel curs are a nuisance to the wayfarer in most foreign lands. It is useless to try and ‘good dog’ them. Instead, abuse them in the hoarsest voice at your command and with the worst language you can think of. They may slink off utterly ashamed of themselves, but, if one comes for you, try this method. Snatch off your hat and hold it out to him, when he will snap at it and seize it by the brim. Now the length of your hat and arm is exactly the length of your leg, and, if you kick out, he will get it just under the jaw, bite his tongue and go off howling. Approaching a dog sleeping in the road, I do so whistling. This wakes him up before I get close and helps to convince him that I am human, in spite of the bag on my shoulder and my outlandish smell.

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