Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

WORKING MY WAY

AROUND THE WORLD

HARRY A. FRANCK

WORKING MY WAY AROUND THE WORLD

REWRITTEN BY

LENA M. FRANCK

FROM

HARRY A. FRANCK’S “VAGABOND JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD”

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND WITH MAPS

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1918

Copyright, 1918, by

The Century Co.

Published, September, 1918

DEDICATED TO

ALL YOUNG FIRESIDE TRAVELERS

Still, as my Horizon grew,

Larger grew my riches, too.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WORKING MY WAY AROUND THE WORLD

CHAPTER I
“CROSSIN’ THE POND WI’ THE BULLOCKS”

After spending some sixteen years in schools and colleges, I decided, one spring, to take a year off and make a trip around the world. I had no money for such a journey; but that didn’t matter for I meant to “work my way” from place to place. I spoke French and German, and had some knowledge of Spanish and Italian. I believed that if I had to work among the people of foreign countries I would learn more of them and of their languages than in any other way. So I was not sorry that I had to start my journey with only my camera and one hundred and four dollars for films.

As a beginning I had arranged to cross the Atlantic on a cattle-boat in the employ of a company in Walkerville, Canada. This company ships thousands of cattle to the markets of England every year. When I asked for a job as cattleman, they employed me at once. So it happened that on the eighteenth of June, 1904, I crossed the Detroit River to Canada, and walked two miles to the Walkerville cattle-barns. From the long rows of low brick buildings sounded now and then a deep bellow, or the song or whistle of a stock feeder at his labor. I left my bag at the office and joined the crew in the yard.

The cattlemen had already begun driving the cattle from the stables. It was no easy task. As soon as they were free, the sleek animals began to prance, to race, and to bellow, leading the stockmen a merry chase all around the yard. Little by little, however, the men managed to urge them slowly up the chute into the waiting cars. The setting sun had reddened the western sky, and darkness had fallen in the alleyways between the endless stables, before the last bull was tied and the last car door locked. The engine gave a warning whistle. We who were to care for the stock on the way raced to the office for our bundles, tossed them on top of the freight-cars, and climbed aboard after them.

The train began to move. The stockmen left behind called out farewells to their friends who were “crossin’ the pond wi’ the bullocks”: “So long, Jim.” “Don’t fergit that smokin’ tobacco for me, Bob.” And we were off.

After a short run we came to the main line of the Canadian Pacific. Here our cars were joined to a long train that was being made up. We were to travel in the caboose. As we came into the glare of the tail lights, carrying our bundles and long poles, the trainmen saw us, and began growling: “Huh! more cow-punchers!”

We rode for thirty-six hours. When we reached Montreal at last, we left the stock to the care of the feeders at the railroad pens, and went at once to the “Stockyards Hotel”—a building filled from bar-room to garret with the odor of cattle.

Where were we going, and when? Up to this time I had not even learned on what ship we were to sail. Then I heard some one say “Glasgow,” and soon the news leaked out that we were to sail on the Sardinian two days later.

On the second evening I went on board the Sardinian with the rest of our crew, and wandered around among the empty cattle-pens built on the four decks. Toward midnight loads of baled straw were brought on board, and we began to “bed down” the pens. When this was finished, we threw ourselves down in the empty stalls and fell asleep.

We were awakened before daylight by a rush of excited cattle and the cries of their drivers. The hubbub lasted for three hours. By that time the animals were securely tied in their stalls, the winch had yanked up on deck three bulls that, having been killed in the rush, were to be dumped in the outer bay, and we were off down the St. Lawrence. The crew fell to coiling up the shore lines and joined the cattlemen in a glad chorus:

“We’re homeward bound, boys, for Glasgow town;

Good-by, fare thee well; good-by, fare thee well!”

The passage across was like other cattle-boat trips. There were a few quarrels, a free-for-all fight now and then, among the cattlemen: the work was hard, the food poor, and the sailors’ quarters in the forecastle unfit to live in. But the voyage was no worse than I had expected.

On the tenth day out, we came on deck to see, a few miles off, the sloping coast of Ireland. Patches of growing and ripening grain made the island look like a huge tilted checkerboard. Before night fell we had left Ireland behind, and it was near the mouth of the Clyde River that we fed the cattle for the last time.

A mighty uproar awakened us at dawn. Glasgow longshoremen, shouting at the top of their voices, were driving the cattle, slipping and sliding, down the gangway. We had reached Europe at last! An hour later the cattlemen were scattering along the silent streets of Sunday morning Glasgow.

CHAPTER II
“ON THE ROAD” IN THE BRITISH ISLES

At noon the next day I received my wages and a printed certificate stating that I had been a sailor on the cattle-boat. I kept it, for the police would surely demand to know my trade while I was tramping through the countries of Europe.

Tucking my camera into an inside pocket, I struck out along the Clyde River toward the Highlands of Scotland. I passed through Dumbarton, a town of factories, and at evening reached Alexandria. A band was playing. I joined the crowd on the village green, and watched the young Scots romping and joking, while their elders stood apart in gloomy silence. A church clock struck nine. The concert ended. The sun was still well above the horizon. I went on down the highway until, not far beyond the town, the hills disappeared, and I saw the glassy surface of a lake, its western end aglow in the light of the drowning sun. It was Loch Lomond.

By and by the moon rose, casting a pale white shimmer over the Loch and its little wooded islands. On the next hillside stood a field of wheat-stacks. I turned into it, keeping well away from the owner’s house. The straw was fresh and clean, and made a soft bed. But the bundles of wheat did not protect me from the winds of the Scottish Highlands. With a feeling that I had not slept soundly, I rose at daybreak and pushed on.

Two hours of tramping brought me to Luss, a pretty little village on the edge of Loch Lomond. I hastened to the principal street in search of a restaurant; but the village was everywhere silent and asleep. Down on the beach of the Loch a lone fisherman was preparing his tackle. He was displeased when I said his fellow townsmen were late risers.

“Why, mon, ’tis no late!” he protested; “’tis no more nor five—and a bonny morning it is, too. But there’s a mist in it,” he complained as he looked at the sky.

I glanced at the bright morning sun and the unclouded sky. I could see no mist, nor any sign of rain. Trying to forget my hunger, I stretched out on the sands to wait for the morning steamer. Ben Lomond, a mountain I had read of in Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” stood just across the Loch, and I had made up my mind to climb it.

About six, a heavy-eyed shopkeeper sold me a roll of bologna and a loaf of bread. The steamer whistle sounded before I got back to the beach. I bought a ticket at the wooden wharf, and hurried out to board the steamer.

A big Scot stepped in front of me and demanded “tup’nce.”

“But I’ve paid my fare,” I said, holding up the ticket.

“Aye, mon, ye hov,” rumbled the native, straddling his legs and thrusting out his elbows. “Ye hov, mon. But ye hovna paid fer walkin’ oot t’ yon boat on our wharf.”

Ten minutes later I paid again, this time for being allowed to walk off the boat at Renwardenen.

Plodding through a half mile of heath and marsh, I struck into the narrow white path that zigzagged up the face of the mountain. The mist that the fisherman had seen began to settle down, and soon turned to a drenching rain. For five hours I scrambled upward, slipping and falling on wet stones and into deep bogs, and coming at last to a broad, flat rock where the path disappeared. It was the top of old Ben Lomond, a tiny island surrounded by whirling gray mist. The wind blew so hard that it almost bowled me off my feet into the sea of fog.

I set off down the opposite slope. In the first stumble down the mountain I lost my way, and came out upon a boggy meadow, where I wandered for hours over low hills and through swift streams. Now and then I scared up a flock of shaggy highland sheep that raced away down wild looking valleys. There was neither road nor foot-path. For seven miles I dragged myself, hand over hand, through a thick growth of shrubs and bushes; and once I fell head first into an icy mountain river before I reached the highway.

At the foot a new disappointment awaited me. There was a hotel, but it was of the millionaire-club kind. I turned toward a group of board shanties at the roadside.

“Can you sell me something to eat?” I inquired of the sour-faced mountaineer who opened the first door.

“I can no!” he snapped. “Go to the hotel!”

There were freshly baked loaves plainly in sight in the next hovel where I stopped.

“Have you nothing to eat in the house?” I demanded.

“No, mon; I’m no runnin’ a shop.”

“But you can sell me a loaf of that bread?”

“No!” bellowed the Scot. “We hovna got any. Go to the hotel. Yon’s the place for tooreests.”

I tried at the other huts; but nobody would sell me any bread. So, though I had already tramped and climbed twenty-five miles, I struck off through the sea of mud that passed for a road, toward Aberfoyle, fifteen miles distant. The rain continued. There was another lake, and then the road stretched away across a dreary field. I became so weary that I forgot I was hungry—then so drowsy that I could hardly force my legs to carry me on. Dusk fell, then darkness. It was past eleven when I splashed into Aberfoyle, too late to find an open shop. I hunted until I found an inn, rang the bell until I awoke a servant, and went supperless to bed.

Late the next morning I hobbled out into the streets of Aberfoyle to the station, and took the train for Sterling. Two days later, in the early afternoon, I reached Edinburgh. Following the signs that pointed the way to the poor man’s section, I brought up in Haymarket Square, a place well known in history. Many places in Europe that were once the palaces of kings and queens are the slums of to-day. A crowd of careless-looking men, in groups and in pairs, sauntered back and forth at the foot of a statue in the center of the square. One of them, as ragged and uncombed as his hearers, was making a speech. Another, in his shirt sleeves, wandered from group to group, trying to sell his coat for the price of a night’s lodging.

A sorry-looking building in front of me bore the sign: “Edinburgh Castle Inn. Clean, capacious beds, 6 shillings.”

I went inside, and found the place so dirty that I was glad to escape again into the street. A big policeman marched up and down with an air of importance.

“Where shall I find a fairly cheap lodging-house?” I asked him.

“Try the Cawstle Inn h’over there,” replied “Bobby,” grandly waving his Sunday gloves toward the place I had just left.

“But that place is not clean,” I objected.

“Not clean! Certainly it is clean! There’s a bloomin’ law makes ’em keep ’em clean,” shouted Bobby, glaring at me.

I entered another inn facing the square, but was thankful to escape from it to the one I had first visited. Here I paid for my lodging, and passed into the main room. It was furnished with benches, tables, and several cook-stoves.

Men were crowded around these stoves, getting their own supper. Water, fuel, and dishes were furnished free to all who had paid their lodging. On the stoves were sputtering or boiling many kinds of cheap food, tended by tattered men who handled frying-pans with their coat-tails as holders, and cut up cabbages or peeled potatoes with knives that had half-inch layers of tobacco on their blades. Each ate his mixture with the greatest enjoyment, as soon as it showed the least sign of being cooked, often without giving it time to cool, as I could tell by the expression on the faces about me.

CHAPTER III
IN CLEAN HOLLAND

Three days later I took passage to London, and that same afternoon sailed for Rotterdam. At sunrise the next morning I climbed on deck, and found the ship steaming slowly through a peaceful canal. On all sides were flat plains, stretching as far as the eye could see. Far below us were clusters of squat cottages with the white smoke of kindling fires curling slowly upward from their chimneys. Here and there a peasant, looking very tiny from our high deck, crawled along over the flat meadows. In the distance clumsy windmills were turning slowly in the morning breeze.

Our canal opened out into the busy harbor of Rotterdam. A customs officer asked me where I was going, slapped me on the back in a fatherly fashion, and warned me in German to look out for the “bad people” who lay in wait for seamen ashore.

I quickly tired of the city, and turned out along the broad, flat highway to Delft. The road ran along at the side of a great canal, and at times crossed branch waterways half hidden by boats, filled with cargo, toiling slowly by on their way to market and by empty boats gliding easily homeward. On board, stout men bowed double over the poles they use to push their craft along. On the bank, along the gravel path, women strained like oxen at the tow-ropes around their shoulders.

In the early afternoon I passed through Delft, and pushed on toward The Hague. Beyond Delft I turned into a narrow cobblestone roadway running between two canals. It was a quiet route. I went on my lonely way, thinking of many things and gazing off across the flat green country.

Suddenly a galloping “rat-a-tat” sounded close behind me. A runaway horse! To pause and glance behind might cost me my life; for the crazed brute was almost upon me. With a swiftness born of fear, I began to run! Luckily, ahead of me I spied a foot-bridge over one of the canals. I made one flying leap toward it, and reached it in safety just as there dashed by me at full speed—a Hollander of some six summers, bound to market with a basket on his arm!

After spending only a few hours in the interesting city of The Hague, I looked for the highway to Leiden. I was not very successful in my search for it, for the mixed language of German, English, and deaf-and-dumb show with which I tried to make myself understood did not get me clear directions. A road to Leiden was finally pointed out to me right enough, but it was not a public highway. By some mistake, I set out along the Queen’s private driveway, which led to the boyhood home of Rembrandt, the great Dutch artist.

It was a pleasure to travel by the Queen’s own highway, of course, especially as it led through a fragrant forest park. But, unfortunately, there was no chance of finding an inn when hunger and darkness came on me. There was not even a cross-road to lead me back to the public highway, where I could find a place to eat and sleep. So I plodded on deep into the lonely forest until night overtook me. Just what hour it was when I reached Leiden, I could not tell. But it was certainly late; for, except a few drowsy policemen, the good people, and even the bad, were sound asleep. With a painful number of miles in my legs, I went to bed on a pile of lumber.

A baker’s cart of Holland on the morning round.

The warm sun awoke me early—before the first shopkeeper was astir. It was Sunday, so I was not able to buy any food. Still hungry, I set off toward Haarlem. On those flat lowlands it was disagreeably hot. Yet the peasants, in their uncomfortable Sunday clothes, plodded for miles along the dusty highway to the village church.

The men marched along sadly, as if they were going to prison. The women, stout, and painfully awkward in their stiffly starched skirts, tramped perspiringly behind the men. Even the children, the frolicking, romping youngsters of the day before, were imprisoned in home-made strait-jackets, and suffered discomfort in uncomplaining silence. Yet one and all spoke a pleasant word to me as they passed.

Ever since leaving Rotterdam, I had noticed that there were no wells in country places. I had so far been able to quench my thirst only in the villages. But toward noon on this hot Sunday I became so thirsty that I finally turned in at the only place in sight, a farm cottage. Beside the road ran the ever-present canal. A narrow foot-bridge crossed it to the gateway leading to the cottage. Around the house ran a branch of the main waterway, giving the farmer a place to moor his canal-boat. I could not open the gate, and I had to shout again and again before any one in the house heard me. At last, from around the corner of the building a very heavy woman came into view, bearing down upon me like an ocean liner sailing into a calm harbor. I could not speak Dutch, but I did the best I could. Perhaps the lady spoke some German, so I said: “Ein Glass Wasser, bitte.”

“Vat?”

It could do no harm to give my mother tongue a trial:

“A glass of water.”

“Eh!”

I tried a mixture of the two languages:

“Ein glass of vater.”

This time she understood.

“Vater?” shrieked the lady, with such force that the rooster in the back yard leaped sidewise a distance of six feet. “Vater!”

“Ja, Vater, bitte.”

A deep silence followed—a silence so intense that one could have heard a fly pass by a hundred feet above. Slowly the lady placed a heavy hand on the gate between us. Perhaps she was wondering if it were strong enough to keep out the madman on the other side. Then, with a snort, she wheeled about and waddled toward the house. Close under the eaves of the cottage hung a tin basin. Snatching it down, she sailed for the canal behind the house, stooped, dipped up a basinful of that very same weed-clogged water that flowed by at my feet, and moved back across the yard to offer it to me with a patient sigh. After that, whenever I became thirsty, I got my drink from roadside canals after the manner of beasts of the field—and Hollanders.

Long before I reached Haarlem, I came upon the great flower farms. I saw more and more of these as I neared the town. I passed through the city of tulips and out onto the broad, straight highway that leads to Amsterdam. It ran as straight as a bee line to where it disappeared in a fog of rising heat-waves. Throughout its length it was crowded with vehicles, horseback riders, and, above all, with wheelmen who would not turn aside an inch for me, but drove me again and again into the wayside ditch.

I reached Amsterdam late in the afternoon; and, after much wandering in and out among the canals, I found a room in a garret overhanging the sluggish waterway. The place was clean, as we have heard all places are in Holland, and there was a coffee-house close at hand, where eggs, milk, cheeses, and dairy products of all kinds were served at small cost and in cleanly surroundings.

I visited parks, museums, and the laborers’ quarters in Amsterdam, and every evening spent a long time searching for my canal-side garret, because it looked so much like other canal-side garrets.

CHAPTER IV
NOT WELCOME IN THE FATHERLAND

One afternoon, while in my favorite coffee-house, I heard some one say that a cargo-boat was to leave for a town in Germany on the Rhine, and that passengers could go along for a song. It was to leave at four. I thrust a lunch into a pocket, and hurried down to the boat. She was a big canal-boat, as black as a coal-barge, but not so clean. Her uncovered deck was piled high with boxes, barrels, and crates, holding everything from beer mugs to noisy chickens. I scrambled over the cargo, and found a seat on a barrel of oil.

I left the cargo-boat at the German town of Arnheim, and walked along the Rhine, stopping at the towns along the way. Partly on foot and partly by steamer, I made my way to the city of Mainz. From there I turned eastward and tramped along the highway to Frankfurt.

It was late at night when I reached Frankfurt. The highway ended among the great buildings of the business blocks. After hunting for some time I found, on a dingy side street, a building on which there was a sign offering lodging at one mark. Truly it was a high price to pay for a bed; but the hour was late, the night stormy, and I was tired. I entered the drinking-room. The bartender was busy quieting the shouts of “Glas Bier” that rose above the rest of the noise. As soon as I could get his attention, I told him that I wanted lodging.

“Beds?” cried the Kellner, too busy with his glasses to look up at me. “To be sure—we have always plenty of beds. One mark.”

But mein Herr, the proprietor, was staring at me from the back of the hall. Slowly he shuffled forward, cocked his head on one side, and studied me closely from out his bleary eyes.

“What does he want?” he demanded, turning to the bartender.

I told him that I wanted a night’s lodging.

“Where do you come from?”

Knowing that he would ask other questions, I explained fully why I was there, and told him that I was an American sailor on a sight-seeing trip in the Fatherland. The drinkers clustered about us and listened. I could see that they did not believe me. While I was talking, they began exchanging glances and nudging one another with looks of disbelief on their faces. Perhaps they distrusted me because I talked like a foreigner and wore the dress of a wanderer.

The proprietor blinked his pudgy eyes, glanced once more into the faces of those about him to see what they thought about it. It may be that he wanted to let me stay; but what would the police inspector say in the morning when he saw the name of a foreigner on the register? He scratched his grizzly head as if to bring out an idea with his stubby fingers. Then he glanced once more at the tipplers, and said, with a blink:

“It gives me pain, young man—I am sorry, but we have not a bed left in the house.”

I wandered out into the night, and told my story to five other inn-keepers. None of them would take me in. One proprietor told me the best way for me to preserve my good health was to make a quick escape into the street. As he was a creature of immense size, I lost no time in following his advice. It was midnight when I finally induced a policeman to tell me where to stay. He pointed out an inn where wanderers were not so much of a curiosity, and I was soon asleep.

The next morning I set out to find the birthplace of the German poet Goethe. When I reached a part of the city where I thought he had lived, I asked a policeman to show me the house.

“Goethe?” he said. Why, yes, he believed he had heard that name somewhere. He was not sure, but he fancied the fellow lived in the eastern part of the city, and he told me how to get there. The route led through narrow, winding streets. Now and then I lost my way, and was set right by other keepers of the law. At last, after tramping most of the morning and wearing out considerable shoe-leather, I found the place directly across the street from the inn at which I had slept.

The next morning I made up my mind to go by rail to Weimar. The train was to start at nine o’clock. I reached the station at eight-forty, bought a fourth-class ticket, and stepped out upon the platform just in time to hear a guard bellow the German words for “All aboard!” The Weimar train stood close at hand. As I stepped toward it, four policemen, strutting about the platform, whooped and sprang after me.

“Where are you going?” shrieked the first to reach me.

“I go to Weimar.”

“But the train to Weimar is gone!” shouted the second officer.

As I had a hand on the car door, I became so bold as to contradict him.

“But yes, it has gone!” gasped a third sergeant, who stood behind the others. “It is gone! The guard has already said ‘All aboard.’”

The train stood at the edge of the platform long enough to have emptied and filled again; but, as it was gone ten minutes before it started, I was obliged to wait for the next one at ten-thirty.

I managed to board the next one. It was a box car with wooden benches around the sides and a door at each end. Almost before we were well started, the most uncombed couple aboard stood up and began to yell. I was alarmed at first, for I did not know what was the matter with them. But after a time I realized that they thought they were singing. Many of the passengers seemed to think so too, for before the pair left at the first station they had gathered a handful of pennies from the listeners.

We stopped at a station at least every four miles during that day’s journey. At the first village beyond Frankfurt the car filled with peasants and laborers in heavy boots and rough smocks, who carried farm tools of all kinds, from pitchforks to young plows. Sunburned women, on whose backs were strapped huge baskets stuffed with every product of the country-side, from cabbages to babies, packed into the center of the car, turned their backs on those of us who sat on the benches and peacefully leaned themselves and their loads against us. The car filled until there was not room for one more.

A guard outside closed the heavy door with a bang, then gave a mighty shout of “Vorsicht!” (“Look out.”) The station-master on the platform raised a hunting-horn to his lips, and blew such a blast as echoed through the ravines of all the country round. The head guard drew his whistle and shrilly repeated the signal. The engineer whistled back. The guard whistled again; the driver gave forth another wild shriek to show that he was ready to start; the man on the platform whistled once more to cheer him on; a heroic squeal came from the cab in answer; and, with a jerk that sent peasants, baskets, farm tools, lime-pails, and cabbages all in a struggling heap at the back of the car, we were off. To celebrate the start the engineer shrieked again and gave a second yank, lest some sure-footed person among us had by any chance kept his balance.

Boundary line between France and Germany. It runs through wheat fields on either side. The nearest sign post bears the German eagles and the further one reads “Frontière.”

There were times during the journey when the villages seemed to be too far apart to suit the engineer. For, having given all the toots, he would bring the car to a sudden stop in the open country. But, as German railway laws forbid passengers to step out, crawl out, or peep out of the car at such times, there was no way of learning whether the engineer had lost his courage or had merely caught sight of a wild flower that took his fancy.

I arrived at Weimar late at night. Next day I set out on foot toward Paris, on the old national road. It wound its way over rolling hills and among the ravines and valleys where was fought a great battle between Germany and France in the Franco-Prussian War. For miles along the way, dotting the hillsides, standing alone or in clusters along lazy brooks or half hidden among the green of summer, were countless simple white crosses marking the graves of fallen soldiers and bearing only the simple inscription, “Here rests Krieger——1870.” At one place I came upon a gigantic statue of a soldier pointing away across a deep wooded glen to the vast graveyard of his fallen comrades.

Plodding early and late, I reached Paris a few days after crossing the boundary.

A mile farther on, in the open country, two iron posts marked the boundary between the two countries. A farmer, with his mattock, stood in Germany, grubbing at a weed that grew in France.

I expected to be stopped when I tried to pass into France, for I knew that the two countries were not on the most friendly terms. The customs house was a mere cottage, the first building of a straggling village some miles beyond the boundary. When I came within sight of it, a friendly-looking Frenchman, in a uniform worn shiny across the shoulders and the seat of the trousers, wandered out into the highway to meet me. Behind him strolled a second officer. But they did not try to delay me. They cried out in surprise when I told them I was an American walking to Paris. They merely glanced into my bundle, and as I went on they called out after me, “Bon voyage!”

I had to wait for some time whenever I came to a railway crossing. Ten minutes before a train was due, the gate-woman would close both gates and return to the shades of her cottage close by. If the train happened to be an hour late, that made no difference. That was the time that Madame was hired to lock the gates, and locked they must remain until the train had passed. It was useless to try to climb over them, for Madame’s tongue was sharp and the long arm of the law was on her side.

Plodding early and late, I reached Paris a few days after crossing the boundary.

A month of tramping had made me an awful sight. Moreover, it was August, and my woolen garments had been purchased with the winds of the Scottish Highlands in mind. For fifteen francs I bought an outfit more suited to the climate. Then I rented a garret, and roamed through the city for three weeks.

CHAPTER V
TRAMPING THROUGH FRANCE

The month of August was drawing to a close when I started southward. At first I had to pass through noisy, dirty villages filled with crying children and many curs. Beyond, travel was more pleasant, for the national highways are excellently built. The heaviest rain raises hardly a layer of mud. But these roads wind and ramble like mountain streams. They zigzag from village to village even in a level country, and where hills abound there are villages ten miles apart with twenty miles of tramping between them.

I passed on into a pleasant rolling country. Beyond Nemours, where I spent the second night, I came upon two tramps. They were sitting in the shade of a giant oak, enjoying a breakfast of hard bread which they dipped, now and then, into a brook at their feet. They invited me to share their feast, but I explained that I had just had breakfast. After finishing they went on with me. They were miners on their way to the great coal-fields of St. Etienne. We were well acquainted in a very short time. They called me “mon vieux,” which means something like “old man” in our language, and greeted every foot-traveler they met by the same title.

There are stern laws in France against wandering from place to place. I knew that the three of us, traveling together, would be asked to explain our business. We were still some distance off from the first village when I saw an officer step from the door of a small building and walk out into the middle of the road to wait for us.

“Where are you going?” he demanded sternly.

“To St. Etienne.”

“And your papers?”

“Here!” cried the miners, each snatching a worn-looking book from a pocket under his coat.

The gendarme stuffed one of the books under an arm, and began to look through the other. Between its greasy covers was a complete history of its owner. It told when he was born and where; where he was baptized; when he had been a soldier, and how he had behaved during his three years in the army; and so on, page after page. Then came pages that told where he had worked, what his employer thought of him, with wages, dates, and reasons why he had stopped working at that particular place. It took the gendarme a long time to look through it.

He finished examining both books at last, and handed them back with a gruff “Well!”

“Next yours,” he growled.

“Here it is,” I answered, and pulled from my pocket a letter of introduction written to American consuls and signed by our Secretary of State.

With a puzzled look, the gendarme unfolded the letter. When he saw the strange-looking English words he gasped with astonishment.

“What!” he exclaimed. “What is this you have here?”

“My passport,” I answered. “I am an American.”

“Ha! American! Zounds! And that is really a passport? Never before have I seen one.”

It was not really a passport, although it was as good as one; but as the gendarme could not read it, he was in no position to dispute my word.

“Very good,” he went on; “but you must have another paper to prove that you have worked.”

Here was a difficulty. If I told him that I was a traveler and no workman, he would probably put me in jail. For a moment I did not know what to do. Then I snatched from my bundle the paper showing that I had worked on a cattle-boat.

“Bah!” grumbled the officer. “More foreign gibberish. What is this villain language that the evil one himself could not read?”

“English.”

“Tiens, but that is a queer thing!” he said thoughtfully, holding the paper out at arm’s length, and scratching his head. However, with some help he finally made out one date on the paper, and, handing it back with a sigh, allowed us to pass on.

“Wait!” he cried before we had taken three steps. “What country did you say you came from?”

“America,” I answered.

“L’Amérique! And, being in America, you come to France? Oh, my soul, what idiocy!” And, waving his arms above his head, he fled to the shade of his office.

We journeyed along as before, showing our papers at each village, and once being stopped in the open country by a gendarme on horseback. By the time we reached Briare in the early afternoon, the miners looked so lean with hunger that I offered to pay for a meal for three. They needed no second invitation, and led the way at once to a place that looked to me like nothing but an empty warehouse. The miners pushed open a door, and we entered a low room, gloomy and unswept. Around the table to which we made our way, through a forest of huge wine barrels, were gathered a dozen or more peasants.

The keeper of the place set out before us a loaf of coarse bread and a bottle of wine, and then went back to his seat on a barrel. His shop was really the wine cellar of a restaurant that faced the main street. The fare would have cost us twice as much there. One of the miners asked me if he might order two sous’ worth of raw salt pork. Having obtained my consent, he did so, and he and his companion ate it with great relish.

I left my companions behind soon after, for they could not walk the thirty miles a day that I had planned for myself, and passed on into the vineyard and forest country. In the fields left bare by the harvesters, peasant women were gathering with the greatest care every overlooked straw they could find, and, their aprons full, plodded homeward.

The inhabitants were already lighting their lamps when I entered the village of La Charité. The bells of a gray church began to ring out the evening angelus. Squat housewives gossiped at the doors of the stone cottages that lined the road. From the neighboring fields heavy ox-carts, the yokes fastened across the horns of the animals, lumbered homeward. In the dwindling light a blacksmith before his open shop was fitting with flat iron shoes a spotted ox tied up on its back in a frame.

I inquired for an inn, and was directed to a ramshackle stone building, one end of which was a stable. Inside, under a sputtering lamp, huddled two men, a woman, and a girl, around a table that looked as if it had held too much wine in its day and was for that reason unsteady on its legs. The four were so busy eating bread and soup that they did not see me come in.

Walking forward to attract attention in the dim light, I stepped on the end of a loose board that supported two legs of the tipsy table, causing the bowl of soup to slide into the woman’s arms and a loaf to roll to the earthen floor. That was unlucky but it made them notice me. One of the men was the proprietor, the other a tramp who spoke very queer French. All the evening, waving his arms above his head, he talked excitedly of the misfortunes he had lived through.

At last the girl agreed to show me to a room. She led the way out of doors, up an outside stairway, to a hole about four feet high over the stable. Here I spent the night, and at daybreak I resumed my journey.

At that season half the highways of France were lined with hedges heavy with blackberries. At first I was not sure they were blackberries, and I was afraid to eat them; for I had noticed that the thrifty French peasant never touched them, letting them go to waste. But, coming one morning upon a hedge fairly loaded with large, juicy fruit, I tasted one, discovered that it was a real blackberry, and fell to picking a capful. A band of peasants, on their way to the fields, stopped to gaze at me in astonishment, and burst into loud laughter.

“But, mon vieux,” cried a plowman, “what in the world will you do with those berries there?”

“Eat them, of course,” I answered.

“Eat them!” roared the countrymen. “But those things are not good to eat.” And they went on, laughing louder than before.

CHAPTER VI
CLIMBING OVER THE ALPS

I tramped through several villages, and came to the bank of the Upper Loire River. A short distance beyond, the road began winding up the first foot-hills of the Alps. Along the way every rocky hillside was cut into steps to its very top, and every step was thickly set with grape-vines.

As I continued climbing upward I left the patches of grape-vines below me, and came to waving forests where sounded the twitter of birds and now and then the cheery song of a woodsman or shepherd boy.

At sunset I reached the top. The road led downward, the forests fell away, the tiny fields appeared once more, and the song of the mountaineer was silent. Lower still, I spent the night at a barracks half filled with soldiers.

The next day was Sunday. As I tramped down the mountains I met groups of people from Lyon, chattering gaily as, dressed in their Sunday clothes, they climbed to the freer air of the hills. I continued my downward journey, stopping now and then to look about me. The grape-vines disappeared, to give place to mulberry trees. From my height I could see the city of Lyon at the meeting-place of the rivers Soane and Rhône. Even on this day of merrymaking the whir of silk-looms sounded from the wayside cottages, well into the suburbs of the city.

From Lyon I turned northeastward toward the Alps. A route winding like a snake climbed upward. Often I tramped for hours around the edge of a yawning pit, having always in view a rugged village and its vineyards far below, only to find myself at the end of that time within a stone’s throw of a sign-post that I had passed before. But I kept on, passed through Geneva, and in a few days’ time came to the town of Brig, at the foot of the Simplon Pass which crosses the Alps.

The highway over the Simplon Pass was built by Napoleon in 1805. It is still, in spite of the railways built since, a well traveled route, though not by foot travelers. The good people of Brig cried out against it when I told them I was going to cross on foot.

With a lunch in my knapsack, I left Brig at dawn. Before the sun rose the morning stage-coach rattled by, and the jeering of its drivers cheered me on. With every turn of the route up the mountain the picture below me grew. Three hours up, Brig still peeped out through the slender pine trees far below, yet almost directly beneath. Across the pit sturdy mountain boys scrambled from rock to boulder with their sheep and goats. Far above the last shrub, ragged peaks of stone stood against the blue sky like figures of curious shapes, peaks aglow with nature’s richest coloring, here one deep purple in the morning shade, there another of ruddy pink, changing like watered silk in the sunshine that gilded its top. Beyond the spot where Brig was lost to view began the roadside cottages in which the traveler, tired out or overcome by the raging storms of winter, may seek shelter. In this summer season, however, they had been changed into wine-shops, where children and stray goats wandered among the tables.

Higher up I found scant footing on the narrow ledges. In several places the road burrowed its way through tunnels. High above one of these, a glacier sent down a roaring torrent right over the tunnel. Through an opening in the outer wall I could reach out and touch the foaming stream as it plunged into the abyss below.

Light clouds, that had hidden the peaks during the last hours of the climb, almost caused me to pass by without seeing the hospice of St. Bernard that marks the summit. It is here that those wonderful St. Bernard dogs are trained to hunt for and give aid to travelers lost in the snow. I stepped inside to write a postal card to the world below, and turned out again into a drizzling rain that soon became a steady downpour. But the miles that had seemed so long in the morning fairly raced by on the downward trip, and a few hours later I reached the boundary line between France and Italy.

CHAPTER VII
IN SUNNY ITALY

The next morning I continued my tramp into sunny Italy. The highway was covered with deep mud, and my garments were still wet when I drew them on. But the day was bright with sunshine. The vine-covered hillside and rolling plains below, the lizards basking on every shelf of rock, peasant women plodding barefoot along the route, made it hard to realize that the weather of the day before had been dismal and chilling.

As I walked on I met countless poor people. Ragged children quarreled for the possession of an apple-core thrown by the wayside; the rolling fields were alive with barefooted women toiling like slaves. A sparrow could not have found a living behind them. In wayside orchards men armed with grain-sacks stripped even the trees of their leaves—for what purpose I did not know until the bed I was assigned to in the village below offered a possible explanation. All along the highway were what looked from a distance like walking hay-stacks. But when I came nearer I saw beneath them the tired faces of women or half grown girls.

Nightfall found me looking for lodging in a lake-side village half way between Como and Lecco. I found an inn after a long and careful search; but, as it had no door opening on to the street, I was puzzled as to where to enter it. There was a dark passageway and a darker stairway before me, leading downward into a pit. I plunged down the passage with my hands out in front of me—which was fortunate, for I brought up against a stone wall. Then I stealthily approached the stairway, stumbled up the stone steps over a stray cat and a tin pan, and into the common room of the village inn—common because it served as kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and office.

I asked for supper and lodging. The proprietor half rose to his feet, sat down again, and motioned me to a seat. I took a place opposite him on one of the two benches near the fireplace, partly because it had been raining outside, but chiefly because there were no chairs. A long silence followed. The keeper sat on his bench, staring long and hard at me without saying a word. His wife wandered in and placed several pots and kettles around the fire that toasted our heels.

“Not nice weather,” grinned the landlord at last, and after that we were soon engaged in lively conversation. Too lively, in fact, for my host at one time became so earnest about something he was telling that he kicked over a kettle of macaroni, and was banished from the chimney-corner by his angry wife. Not being in the habit of making gestures with my feet, I kept my place and tried to answer the questions that the exile fired at me from across the room.

When drowsiness fell upon me, the hostess led the way to a large, airy room. The coarse sheets on the bed were remarkably white, although the Italian housewife does her washing in the village brook, and never uses hot water. Such labor is cheap in Italy, and for all of this I paid less than ten cents.

Early next day I pushed on toward Lecco. A light frost had fallen in the night, and the peasants, alarmed by the first breath of winter, sent into the vineyards every man, woman, and child able to work. The pickers labored feverishly. All day women plodded from the fields to the roadside with great buckets of grapes to be dumped into barrels on waiting ox-carts. Men wearing heavy wooden shoes jumped now and then into the barrels and stamped the grapes down. When full, the barrels were covered with strips of dirty canvas, the farmer climbed into his cart, turned his oxen into the highway, and promptly fell asleep. When he reached the village, he drew up before the chute of the village wine-press, and shoveled his grapes into a slowly revolving hopper. Here they were crushed to an oozy pulp, and then run into huge tanks and left to settle.

After stopping for a morning lunch I tramped through and beyond Bergamo, where a level highway led across a vast plain covered with grape-vines and watered by a network of canals. Behind me only a ghostlike range of the Alps wavered in the haze of the distant sky-line.

About the time I arrived in northern Italy the butchers had gone on a strike. That did not trouble me much, for I had eaten nothing but bread for weeks. The bread was made into loaves of the size, shape, and toughness of baseballs. Still, hard loaves soaked in wine, or crushed between two wayside rocks, could be eaten, in a way; and as long as they were plentiful I could not suffer from lack of food.

A few miles farther on, however, at each of the bakeries of a village I was turned away with the cry of:

“There is no bread! The strike! The bakers have joined the strike and no more bread is made.”

To satisfy that day’s appetite I had to eat “paste,” a mushy mess of macaroni.

I was returning next morning from an early view of the picturesque bridges and the ancient buildings of Verona, when I came upon a howling mob, quarreling, pushing, and scratching in a struggle to reach the gateway leading to the city hall. Behind this gate above the sea of heads I could just see the top of some heavy instrument, and the caps of a squad of policemen. I asked an excited neighbor the cause of the squabble. He glared at me and howled something in reply. The only word I understood was pane (bread). I turned to a man behind me. Before I could speak to him, he shoved me aside and crowded into my place, at the same time shouting, “Pane!” I tried to crowd past him. He jabbed me twice in the ribs with his elbows, and again roared, “Pane!” In fact, everywhere above the howl and noise of the multitude one word rang out, clear and sharp—“Pane! pane! pane!” My hunger of the day before, and the thought of the long miles before me, aroused my interest in that product. I dived into the human whirlpool and battled my way toward the center.

Reaching the front rank, I paused to look about me. Behind the iron gate, a dozen perspiring policemen were guarding several huge baskets of those baseball loaves. Beyond them stood the instrument that had attracted my attention. It was a pair of wooden scales that looked big enough to give the weight of an ox. Still farther on, an officer, who seemed to feel the importance of his position, sat over a huge book, a pen the size of a dagger behind each ear, and one resembling a young bayonet in his hand.

One by one, the citizens of Verona were pushed through the gate into the space where the policemen guarded the bread, to be halted suddenly with the shouted question, “Pound or two pounds?” Once weighed out, his loaves were passed rapidly from one to another of the officials, so rapidly that the citizen had to run to keep up with them. When he reached the officer sitting before the big book, he had to pause while the latter asked him questions and wrote down the answers. Then he ran on until he reached the receiving table of another official, where he caught his flying loaves and made his escape.

Almost before I had time to see how it was done, the pushing crowd sent me spinning through the gate. “Two pounds!” I shouted as I rushed on in my journey toward the book. In a very short time I had reached the last official, dropped ten soldi, gathered up my bread, and left by a gate that opened into an alley.

Perhaps you think it was easy to carry two armfuls of baseball loaves. Take my word for it that it was no simple task. A loaf rolled into the gutter before I had taken a dozen steps. The others tried to squirm out of my grasp. With both hands full, I had to disgrace myself by squatting on the pavement to fill my pockets; and even then I had a hard time keeping them from jumping away from me. People must have taken me for a traveling juggler. I made up my mind that I must either give or throw some of those loaves away.

He who longs to give alms in Italy has not far to look for some one willing to benefit by his kindness. I glanced down the alley, and my eyes fell on a mournful-looking beggar crouched in a gloomy doorway. With a kind-hearted smile, I bestowed upon him enough of my load to enable him to play the American national game until the season closed. The outcast wore a sign marked, “Deaf and dumb.” Either he had picked up the wrong card in hurrying forth to business that morning, or my generous gift surprised him out of his misfortune; for as long as a screeching voice could reach me I was flooded with more blessings than I could possibly have found use for.

I plodded on toward Vincenza. All that day, while I sat in village inns, groups of discouraged-looking men sat scolding against the bakers, and watching me enviously as I soaked my hard-earned loaves in a glass of wine.

When morning broke again, I decided to test the third-class cars of Italy to see if they were more comfortable than walking; so I took the train from Vincenza to Padua. At least, the ticket I purchased bore the name Padua, though the company hardly lived up to the printed agreement thereon. At the end of several hours of slow jolting and bumping, we were set down in the center of a wheat-field. The guard shouted, “Padua!” It seemed to me I had heard somewhere that Padua boasted buildings and streets, like other cities. It was possible that I had not been informed correctly. But I could not rid myself of the idea, and I wandered out through the lonely station to ask the first passer-by how to get to Padua.

“Padova!” he snorted. “Certainly this is Padova! Follow this road for a mile. Just before you come in sight of a white-washed pig-sty, turn to the left, walk straight ahead, and the city cannot escape you.”

I followed his directions, and in due time came to the city gate.

I never saw such a sleepy town. The sun is certainly hot in Italy in the summer months, but I had not expected to find a place where the people slept all the time. The city seemed lost in slumber. The few horses dragged their vehicles after them at a snail’s pace, the drivers nodding on their seats. Many of the shop-keepers had put up their shutters and gone home to rest. Those who had not could with difficulty be aroused from their midday naps to attend to the wants of yawning customers. The very dogs slept in the gutters or under the chairs of their drowsy masters. Even many of the buildings were crumbling away and seemed to be falling asleep like the inhabitants.

However, I had a chance to look at the famous statues and architecture in peace, and, leaving the sleepy city to slumber on, I set off at noonday toward Venice. Away to the eastward stretched land as flat and unbroken as the sea. Walking was not so easy, however, as it had been among the mountains behind, for a powerful wind from the Adriatic Sea pressed me back like an unseen hand at my breast. Although I had been certain that I would reach the coast town, Fusiano, before evening, twilight found me still plodding across barren lowlands. With the first twinkling star a faint glow of light appeared afar off to the left. Steadily it grew until it lighted up a distant corner of the sky, while the wind howled stronger and louder across the unpeopled waste.

Night had long since settled down when the lapping of waves told me that I had reached the coast-line. A few rickety huts rose up out of the darkness; but still far out over the sea hovered that glow in the sky—no distant fire, as I had supposed, but the reflected lights of the island city, Venice. I had long been thinking of the cheering meal and the soft couch that I would have before boarding the steamer that would take me to the city of the sea; but I had to do without them. For there was no inn among the hovels of Fusiano. I took shelter in a shanty down on the beach, and waited patiently for the ten o’clock boat.

By ten o’clock there had gathered on the crazy wharf enough dark-faced people to fill the steamer. On the open sea the wind was wild. Now and then a wave spat in the faces of the passengers huddled together on the deck. A ship’s officer jammed his way among us to collect the six-cent tickets.

The Bridge of Sighs, so-called because it leads from the Justice Court in the Palace of the Doges on the left to the prison on the right. It crosses the Grand Canal of Venice.

By and by the steamer stopped tossing about and began to glide smoothly. I pushed to the rail to peer out into the night. Before me I saw a stretch of smooth water in which twinkled the reflection of thousands of lights of smaller boats, and the illuminated windows of a block of houses rising sheer out of the sea. We glided into port. A gondola lighted up by torches at both ends glided across our path. A wide canal opened on our left, and wound in and out among great buildings faintly lighted up by lamps and lanterns on the mooring-posts. It was the Grand Canal of Venice. The steamer nosed its way through a fleet of gondolas and tied up at a landing before a marble column.

I went ashore and looked about me. There were no streets, and the hotels that faced the canals were all too expensive for me. I did not know where to look for the poor man’s section of the city. For two full hours I tramped through squares and dark, narrow alleys, only to turn up at last within a stone’s throw of my landing-place. I finally spent the night outdoors, sitting on the edge of the canal.

After spending a few days in Venice, I walked down to the Grand Canal one morning, with my mind made up to ride in a gondola. I had difficulty in attracting the attention of the water cabman. They are not in the habit of asking men wearing corduroys and flannel shirts to be their passengers. A score of them had just recovered from a rush made on a tow-head wearing the regular tourist clothes. They did not seem to see me. When I boldly called out to them, they crowded around me to jeer and laugh at the laborer trying to play the lord. For some time they thought I was joking. I had to show them my purse with money in it before one of them offered to take me aboard.

Along the Grand Canal passing gondoliers, without passengers to keep them in proper conduct, flung cutting taunts at my boatman.

“Eh, Amico!” they called out, “what’s that you’ve got?”

My gondolier on the Grand Canal.

“Ch’è un rico colui quà, eh?” (“Pretty rich wine that, eh?”)

“Sanque della Vergine, caro mio, dove hai accozzato quello?” (“But, my dear fellow, where did you pick that one up?”)

But my guide finally lost his grin and became respectful, pointing out objects of interest with a face as solemn as an owl, and shaking his head sternly at his fellow boatmen when they began to joke.

Fear drove me away from Venice before I had rested the miles from Paris out of my legs—fear that in a few days more the mosquitoes would finish their wicked work and devour me entirely. On a Sunday evening I made my way to the station and bought a third-class ticket to Bologna.

Under a lowering sun our train crawled slowly into Bologna—so slowly that I was glad to get off and walk. I struck off along the ancient highway to Florence. The country was mountainous, so that when I was not climbing up I was climbing down. The people in this section were very poor, earning their living by tending cattle or by making wine. A few miles from the town the highway began to wind up among lonely mountains. Here and there a vineyard clung to a wrinkled hillside. At such spots tall cone-shaped buckets holding about two bushels each stood by the roadside, some filled with grapes, others with the floating pulp left by the crushers.

What kind of crusher was used I did not learn until nearly nightfall. Then, suddenly coming round a huge boulder, I stepped into a group of bare-legged women who were slowly treading up and down in as many buckets of grapes.

Darkness overtook me when I was high among the lonely mountains, far from any hut or village. A half hour later a mountain storm burst upon me.

For what seemed an endless length of time I plunged on. Then before me I noticed a faint gleam of light flickering through the downpour. I splashed forward, and banged on a door beside a window through which the light shone. The door was quickly opened, and I fell into a tiny wine-shop. Three drinkers sat in the room. They stared stupidly for some time while the water ran away from me in little rivers along the floor. Then the landlord remarked, with a silly grin:

“You are all wet.”

“Also hungry,” I answered. “What’s to eat?”

“Da mangiare! Ma! Not a thing in the house.”

“The nearest inn?”

“Six miles on.”

“I suppose I must go to bed supperless, then,” I sighed, drawing my water-soaked bundle from beneath my coat.

“Bed!” cried the landlord. “You cannot sleep here. I keep no lodging-house.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “Do you think I am going on in this flood?”

“I keep no lodging-house,” repeated the host stubbornly.

I sat down on a bench, determined that no three Italians should throw me out without a struggle. One by one, they came forward to try coaxing, growling, and shouting at me, shaking their fists in my face. I stuck stubbornly in my place. The landlord was ready to weep, when one of his countrymen drew me to the window and offered to let me stay in his barn across the way. I made out through the storm the dim outline of a building, and, catching up my bundle, dashed with the native across the road and into a stone hovel. I could feel under my feet that the floor was nothing but the bare ground. An American cow would balk at the door of the house of a mountain peasant of Italy; she would have fled bellowing if she had seen the inside of the barn that came to view when my companion lighted a lantern. He pointed to a heap of corn husks in a corner behind the oxen and donkeys. Then, fearful of losing a moment over the wine with his fellows, he gave the lantern a shake that put out the light, and, leaving me in utter darkness, hurried away.

I felt my way toward the husks, narrowly missed knocking down the last donkey in the row, and was about to throw myself down on the heap, when a man’s voice at my feet shouted a word that I did not catch. Being in Italy, I answered in Italian:

“Che avete? Voglio dormire qui.”

“Ach!” groaned the voice in German. “Only an accursed Italian.”

“Here, friend,” I shouted in German, poking the form with my foot. “Whom are you calling accursed?”

The man in the husks sprang to his feet with a wild shout.

“Lieber Gott!” he shrieked, clutching at my coat and dancing around me. “Lieber Gott! You understand German. You are no cursed Italian. God be thanked. In three weeks have I heard no German.”

Even the asses were complaining by the time he had finished shouting and settled down to tell his troubles. He was only another German on his Wanderjahr (year of wandering), who had strayed far south in the peninsula, and, after losing his last copper, was struggling northward again as rapidly as he could on strength gained from a crust of bread or a few wayside berries each day. One needed only to touch him to know that he was as thin as a side-show skeleton. I offered him half of a cheese I carried in a pocket, and he snatched it with the hungry cry of a wolf, and devoured it as we burrowed deep into the husks.

All night long the water dripped from my elbows and oozed out of my shoes, and a bitter mountain wind swept through the cracks of the building. I had just begun to sleep when morning broke. I rose with joints so stiff that I could hardly move. I pounded and rubbed them for a half hour before they were in working order. Outside a cold drizzle was falling; but, bidding farewell to my companion of the night, I set out along the mountain highway.

Two hours beyond the barn, I came upon a miserable group of huts crowded together on the top of a hill. Among them was an even more miserable inn, where I stopped for a bowl of thin soup in which had been drowned a lump of black bread. Then still hungry, I plodded on in the drizzle.

A night of corn-husks had made me look more like a beggar than I knew. Two miles beyond the village, I passed a ragged road-repairer and a boy who were breaking stone at the wayside. Near by was a hedge weighted down with blackberries, to which I hastened and fell to picking my late dinner. The workman stared a moment, open-mouthed, laid aside his sledge, and mumbled something to the boy. The boy left his place, wandered down the road a short distance beyond me, and idled about as if waiting for someone. With a half filled cap, I set off again. The boy edged nearer to me as I approached, and, brushing against me, thrust something under my arm and ran back to the stone-pile. In my astonishment I dropped the gift on the highway. It was a quarter loaf of black bread left over from the ragged workman’s dinner.

The next afternoon found me looking down upon the city of Florence, in a vast valley where the winding Arno was bluish silver under the setting sun. By evening I was housed in the city of the poet Dante and the artist Michelangelo.

During my four days in Florence I lived with the poorest working class, but spent hours each day in cathedral and galleries. Beggars were everywhere. I paid half a franc a day for a good sized room, and bought my food of a traveling restaurant. At night there appeared at street corners in the unwashed section of the city men with pushcarts laden with boiled tripe. Around them gathered jostling crowds, who continued pushing until the last morsel had been sold. Each customer seemed to possess but a single cent which he had carefully guarded through the day, waiting for the coming of the tripe man. Never did the peddler make a sale without a quarrel arising over the size of the morsel; and never did the buyer leave until a second strip about the size of a match had been added to his share to make up what he claimed to be the fair weight.

I spent most of my fourth day in Florence looking at her works of art. Late that afternoon I decided not to return to my lodging, and wandered off along the highway to Rome. The country was still mountainous, but the ranges were not so steep and there were more huts than to the north. When night settled down, I could see before me a country inn on a hilltop.

I wandered on, reached the inn, went inside, and sat down. At first the groups of men seated before the fireplace and around the table scarcely looked my way. When I began to speak, however, they turned to stare, and began nodding and glancing at one another as if they said:

“Now where do you suppose he comes from?”

I did not offer to tell them, though they squirmed with curiosity. Finally one of them, clearing his throat, hinted timidly:

“Hem, ah—you are a German, perhaps?”

“No.”

The speaker rubbed his neck with a horny hand and turned awkwardly to look at his fellows.

“Hah, you are an Austrian!” charged another, with a scowl.

“No.”

“Swiss?” suggested a third.

“No.”

They began to show greater interest. A traveler from any but these three countries is something to attract unusual attention in the country inns of Italy.

“Ah!” tried a fourth member of the group. “You are a Frenchman?”

“No.”

The geographical knowledge of the party was used up. There followed a long wrinkled-browed silence. The landlady wandered in with a pot, looked me over out of a corner of her eye, and left slowly. The silence grew intense. A native opened his mouth twice or thrice, swallowed his breath with a gulp, and purred with a frightened air:

“Er, well—what country does the signore come from?”

“From America.”

A chorus of exclamations woke the cat dozing under the fireplace. The hostess ran in, open-mouthed, from the back room. The landlord dropped his pipe and exclaimed “Ma!” in astonishment. The slowest of the party left their games and stories and crowded closely around me.

One man began telling what he knew of America. Among other things, he said the railway trains of America run high up in the air above the houses. When the others did not seem to believe it, he tried to prove it by shouting at them. He said he had read about it in a newspaper. Then he mentioned “Nuova York,” and asked me if it were not also true that its buildings were higher than the steeple of the village church, and whether the railroads were not built high to enable the people to get into such high houses. He seemed to think that Americans never come down to earth. When he gave me a chance to speak, I explained that what he had read was about the New York Elevated and not about the railways of the whole country.

Moreover, “Nuova York” meant America to the whole party. Not a man of them knew that there were two Americas; not one had ever heard the term “United States.” Many country people of Italy think of America as a land somewhere far away,—how far or in what direction they have no idea,—where wages are higher than in Italy. Countless times questions like these were asked:

“Is America farther away than Switzerland?”

“Did you walk all the way from America?”

“Who is king of America?”

“Why! Are you a native American? I thought Americans were black!”

Finally a woman added insult to injury by asking:

“In America you worship the sun, non e vero?”

One evening, at a country inn, I remarked that the United States as a whole is as large, if not larger, than Italy. My hearers were deafening me with shouts of scorn and disbelief when a newcomer of the party came to my assistance.

“Certainly that is right!” he cried. “It is larger. I have a brother in Buenos Ayres, and I know. America, or the United States, as this signore chooses to call it, has states just like Italy. The states are Brazil, Uruguay, Republica Argentina, and Nuova York.”

The roadway between Florence and Siena winds through splendid scenery and over mountains, from the top of which I had a complete view in every direction of the surrounding hills and valleys. But I had little chance to admire the scenery, for again and again I had to jump aside and vault over roadside hedges before a team of oxen driven round a hill. These oxen had horns that measured at least six and even seven feet from tip to tip, so when I met two of them yoked together there wasn’t much room left for me. Moreover, their drivers were frequently sound asleep, and the animals wandered this way and that as they pleased all over the highway, tossing their horns toward me. As I met them at almost every quarter mile, I had to be watchful and quick.

I came upon Siena at last. Before me lay a broad, fertile valley with a rocky hill rising from the center of it. The houses were scattered over the hill, some of them on the very top, others clinging to the sides as if fearful of falling to the bottom into the valley itself. It was another of those up-and-down towns whose streets should be fitted with ladders; where every householder is in danger, every time he steps out of doors, of falling into the next block, should he by any chance lose his hold on the front of his dwelling. I managed to climb into the city without actually crawling on my hands and knees; but more than once I kept my place only by clutching at the nearest building.

A country family returning from market. The grape casks being empty the boys do not need to walk home.

Two days after leaving Siena I was tramping along a highway that wound over low mountains, between whispering forests, in utter loneliness. Where the woods ended stretched many another weary mile, with never a hut by the wayside. Now and then I came upon a shepherd clad in sheepskins, sitting among his flocks on a hillside.

The sun sank while I was plodding through an endless marsh. All about me were the whispering of great fields of reeds and grasses, and the dismal croaking of countless frogs. Twilight faded to black night. Far away before me the lights of Rome brightened the sky; yet hours of tramping seemed to bring them not a yard nearer.

Forty-one miles had I covered, when three hovels rose up by the wayside. One was a wine-shop. I went inside and found it filled with traveling teamsters. One of them offered me a bed on his load of straw in the stable.

He rose at daybreak and drove off, and at that early hour I started once more on my way to Rome. The lonely road led across a windy marsh, rounded a low hill, and brought me face to face with the ancient city that was once the center of the civilized world.

To the right and left, on low hills, stood large buildings like those in American cities. From these buildings a mass of houses sloped down the hills and covered the broad valleys between them. The Tiber River wound its way among the dull gray dwellings. Here and there a dome shone brightly in the morning sunshine. But, towering high above all, dwarfing everything else, stood the vast dome of St. Peter’s.

As I looked I thought of how, hundreds of years ago, people had caught their first glimpse of Rome from this very hilltop. Before the days of railroads, travelers had come by this same road, millions of them on foot, and entered the city by this same massive western gateway. I watched the steady stream of peasants, on wagons, carts, donkeys, and afoot, pouring through this same entrance; while officers stood there, running long slim swords through bales and baskets of farm produce. Finally I joined the noisy, surging crowd, and was swept within the walls.

I spent nearly a week wandering through St. Peter’s, the Vatican Art galleries, and among the chapels, ruins, and ancient monuments of Rome. Then I turned southward again on the road to Naples. For three days the route led through a territory packed with ragged, half-starved people, who toiled constantly from the first peep of the sun to the last waver of twilight, and crawled away into some hole during the hours of darkness. They were not much like the people of northern Italy. Shopkeepers snarled at their customers, false coins of the smallest sort made their appearance, and had I not looked so much like the natives themselves I should certainly have won the attention of those who lived by violence.

In this section the language changed rapidly. The tongue spoken in Florence and Siena was almost foreign here. A word learned in one village was not understood in another a half day distant. The villages were perched at the summits of the steepest hills, up which each day’s walk ended with a weary climb by steep paths of stones that rolled under my feet.

For three nights after leaving Rome I had to sleep out of doors. On my fourth day I found lodging at the wayside, in a building that was one fourth inn and three fourths stable. The keeper, his wife, and their many children all were barefooted. The father sat on a stool, bouncing the baby up and down on his broad feet. Another child squatted on top of the four-legged board that served as a table, and in a fit of bashfulness thrust his fingers into his mouth.

“You have lodgings for travelers?” I inquired.

“Yes,” growled the owner.

“How much for bed?”

“Two cents.”

I demanded to see the lodging that could be had at such a price.

“Giovanni,” bawled the head of the house, “bring in the bed!”

A moth-eaten youth flung open the back door, and threw at my feet a dirty grain-sack filled with crumpled straw that peeped out here and there.

After I had rested awhile, the father bawled once more to his son, and motioned to me to take up my bed and walk. I followed the youth out to the stable, picking my way by the light of the feeble torch he carried. Giovanni waded inside, pointed out to me a long, narrow manger of slats, and fled, leaving me alone with the problem of how to rest nearly six feet of body on three feet of stuffed grain-sack. I tried every way I could think of, but decided at last to sleep on the bare slats and use the sack as a pillow.

I had just begun to doze, when an outer door opened and let in a great draft of night air, closely followed by a flock of sheep that quickly filled the stable to overflowing. Some of the animals tried to overflow into the manger, sprang back when they found me in it, and made their discovery known to their companions by several long “b-a-a-s.” The news awakened a truly Italian curiosity. The sheep started a procession, and the whole band filed by the manger, every animal poking its nose through the slats for a sniff. This over, each of the flock expressed its opinion of my presence in trembling, nerve-racking bleats. They kept this up until the youth came to tell me that it was morning, and carried off my bed, fearful, no doubt, that I would run off with that valuable piece of property.