HOW THE WORLD TRAVELS

HOW THE WORLD
TRAVELS

BY
A. A. METHLEY, F.R.G.S.

ILLUSTRATED BY
W. H. HOLLOWAY

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS II

HOW THE WORLD TRAVELS

CHAPTER I
TRAVEL IN THE OLDEN DAYS

"Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, cart": we have all, most likely, repeated these words again and again, as we counted the cherry-stones out of a pie, the petals of a daisy, or the tufts on a blade of grass, and we have hoped, as we counted, that Dame Fortune would give us a coach or a carriage to drive to church in on our wedding morning.

A cart seemed a very commonplace affair, and a wheelbarrow was almost too absurd to be possible. Yet there are countries where people actually ride in wheelbarrows and in other conveyances even more quaint and unusual.

It will be interesting, perhaps, to borrow a magic carpet for a little while, or the cap of Fortunatus, and travel round the world and back through the ages of history, so that we may see the strange vehicles that are in use to-day, and those in which our ancestors made their journeys hundreds of years ago.

The first conveyances of all, used in far-away prehistoric days and later still in wild uncivilised lands, were simply rough sleds on which heavy loads were dragged. Later, circular slabs of wood were cut from the trunks of trees to serve as wheels, and, instead of pulling these primitive carts themselves, the men trained oxen to do the work.

As time went on improvements were made, and we find pictures of chariots on the walls of the ancient, ruined cities of Egypt and Assyria.

The Bible tells us of the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh, who were overwhelmed in the Red Sea, but more than two hundred years before that time King Thutmosis of Egypt had a wonderful war chariot, which, in 1903, was discovered in his tomb at Thebes. It is now in the museum at Cairo, and on it are painted pictures of Thutmosis driving in the chariot, charging his enemies and shooting arrows at them.

Other nations also used chariots in warfare, and we read that they carried two men, one being the driver and the other the warrior. In a close encounter the soldier alighted and fought on foot. Some of these chariots were armed with great hooks or scythes fastened to the wheels. Julius Cæsar tells us that when he invaded Britain the chief, Cassivelaunus, had more than four thousand chariots, and he describes how skilfully they were handled by their drivers.

The Romans themselves used chariots both for warlike and peaceful purposes, and they were named biga, triga, or quadriga, according to the number of horses by which they were drawn. Chariot races were an important feature of the great festivals that took place in the Colosseum, and it is said that Nero once drove one with ten horses abreast.

These racing chariots were, of course, lightly made and designed for speed, but there were other vehicles of great size and magnificence, which carried successful generals when they rode in triumph through Rome to celebrate their victories. This triumphal car was usually drawn by four white horses, but very often by lions, elephants, tigers, bears, leopards, or dogs.

Other vehicles for more everyday use were to be seen in the streets of ancient cities, and in the paved roadways of Pompeii are deep ruts made by the wheels of chariots nearly two thousand years ago.

Litters were also used at that time, and Pliny calls them "travellers' chambers." They were borne on shafts, and special slaves used to act as bearers. Roman ladies often travelled in covered carriages called carpenta, which were gorgeously decorated.

During the mediæval ages carriages fell into disuse, or were only employed by women and invalids, or by kings and princes on ceremonial occasions. Charlemagne had a wonderful vehicle with richly ornamented wheels and an inlaid roof supported by columns, and the Crusaders on their march had with them large wagons for their baggage.

In the fourteenth century new conveyances called whirlicotes and charettes were used. When King Richard II. married Anne of Denmark, the new queen entered London accompanied by her maids of honour, who drove in charettes, which were wagons with benches, painted red and lined with scarlet cloth. On London Bridge were crowds of people anxious to see the royal bride. In the confusion, one of the charettes was overturned and the ladies thrown to the ground.

Litters very much like those of Roman days were still to be seen in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At her coronation Queen Elizabeth of York, dressed in white and with her golden hair loose over her shoulders, was carried through London in a rich litter, with a canopy over her head borne by four Knights of the Bath.

Anne Boleyn, in 1553, was carried to her coronation in a litter covered with cloth of gold, and the two horses that supported it were clothed in white damask.

During the Middle Ages vehicles were so few because the roads were very bad, and in many places there were only rough bridle-paths from one town to another. Riding was, therefore, the principal means of transit, and horses, mules, and donkeys were used. Very large horses, the ancestors of our present cart-horses, were ridden by the knights, for a warrior in heavy mail could only be carried by a strong animal. This was especially the case when it was necessary for the horse itself to be also clothed in metal armour.

The ladies also rode, and side-saddles were first introduced into England by Anne of Bohemia, the wife of Richard II. These saddles were very different from those of the present day, for they were like chairs placed sideways on the horses' backs.

Pack-horses were much used in mediæval times, and pictures show us long trains of these animals, each with its heavy load, wending their way along the rough, narrow pathways of old England.

CHAPTER II
COACHING DAYS

Coaching days! The words carry us back a hundred years or more, and bring to our minds gay, romantic pictures of scarlet-clad postilions, prancing horses, and a rosy-faced driver with his long whip and quaint three-tiered cape. We seem to hear the merry sound of the horns, the ring of hoofs, and the rattle of harness, as the coach, with its passengers and piled baggage, clatters along a broad high road or draws up at the open door of some old-fashioned English inn. Those are the eighteenth-century days that we call to mind, the days when coaching was at its height, but we must go further back than that if we want to find the origin of this form of conveyance, and to see how it developed out of the clumsy wagons and quaint whirlicotes and charettes of mediæval times.

We first hear of coaches in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and they are said to have been introduced into England in 1594 by a coachman who was a native of Holland.

There is an old picture of the great queen riding in one of her new equipages on some state occasion. It was open at the sides, had a high roof decorated with waving plumes, and was drawn by two richly caparisoned horses.

At first, it appears, coaches were reserved for the use of royalty, but Stowe tells us that "after a while divers great ladies made them coaches and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all beholders." He goes on to say that within twenty years coach-making became an important trade in England.

These coaches were very different from those of later times, for they were open at the sides and the wheels were very small and low. In shape they were not unlike the state coach that is still used at coronations and other great occasions.

During the seventeenth century many alterations and improvements took place in coach-building both in England and France, and in 1620 we find Louis XIV. driving in a carriage with glass sides. In the reign of this monarch, too, a curious light two-wheeled conveyance was introduced. It was called a flignette and very much resembled a modern dog-cart.

Hired carriages, too, began to be seen in the streets of Paris, and in 1625 they appeared in London. Very few of them were allowed at first, but in 1634 an old sea-captain named Baily established a stand for hackney coaches near the Maypole in the Strand, and by the end of the century there were no fewer than eight hundred of these vehicles in the City and suburbs.

Nowadays, when we can travel from one end of the country to the other in a few hours, we should think the old conveyances very slow coaches indeed, but at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries they were thought marvels of swiftness. It took a week—only a week, people said then—to go from London to York, and the journey to Manchester could actually be made in four days.

In Hogarth's pictures we can see what an early stage coach was like, with its large, clumsy wheels, high roof, and an enormous basket at the back in which baggage was carried and where passengers who wished to travel cheaply could sit. Later on this basket developed into an extra back seat, and in a picture painted in 1834 there is a coach with no less than three separate compartments, besides having seats on the roof.

In 1784 sixteen coaches left London every day, and it was one of the sights of the City to see them start from the General Post Office on their journeys. Each vehicle had an armed guard, for those were the days of highwaymen, and it was no uncommon thing for travellers to be stopped and robbed by gentlemen of the road.

Dick Turpin was one of these thieves, and for a long time he terrorised Epping Forest and the outskirts of London, and another famous—or infamous—robber was the young Frenchman Claud Duval, about whom many romantic tales are told. On one occasion he returned the jewels that he had stolen from a beautiful lady, on condition that she would descend from her carriage and dance a measure with him on the open road.

It is difficult now to realise what our highways were like a hundred years ago and more, when coaching was at its height. Then the great roads were crowded with traffic, post-chaises, stage wagons, and pack-horses. Now it is sad to see the same roads narrowed to half their former width by broad borders of grass that have been allowed to grow.

In those days there were many private travelling carriages besides the public coaches. A most interesting one is now in London at Madame Tussaud's. This is the wonderful coach which belonged to Napoleon Buonaparte. In it the great emperor rode back from Russia after the burning of Moscow, and later on from Cannes to Paris on his triumphal progress through France in 1815.

It is said that Napoleon himself designed the fittings of this carriage, for it contained everything necessary for a long journey, and was intended to serve the purpose of a bedroom, a dining-room, and a kitchen. The coach was captured by a German officer after the Battle of Waterloo, the emperor making his escape on horseback; and having been purchased by a man named Bullock, it was exhibited through the whole of the United Kingdom.

Gradually, as time went on, railways superseded the picturesque old coaches. They continued to be used, however, in less civilised countries, and can still be seen in the wild forest districts of Australia, New Zealand, and America.

In the early pioneer days of the United States these coaches, with their loads of passengers and mails, sometimes encountered bands of Red Indians in their journeys across the prairies, and there are stories of terrible disasters and narrow escapes when the travellers were pursued and attacked by the savages.

Those exciting times have passed away now, but coaches have not entirely disappeared. In Hyde Park on Sunday mornings before the War we could see the beautiful vehicles of the Four-in-hand Club to remind us of how our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers travelled in the merry—but, perhaps, rather dangerous—days of old.

CHAPTER III
STRANGE VEHICLES OF EUROPE

It is not only in the far-away countries of the world that we must travel in order to discover curious conveyances. Some are to be seen quite near at home, even in England itself. We must remember that as a rule it is because things are unfamiliar that they seem quaint and curious, so let us try to imagine for a few moments that we are natives of some distant land who have come to pay a visit to Great Britain.

We land at Dover, perhaps, or Newhaven, and go along the coast until we come to Brighton. It is quite a commonplace seaside town, no doubt, but, in our characters of observant foreigners, we shall notice many interesting things, and among them are several extraordinary little vehicles which are drawn up in a row along the parade.

What can they be, these tiny carriages, each with its wheels, shafts, and box-seat complete? Then we see that instead of a pony or donkey, the little conveyances are drawn by shaggy, long-horned goats.

The stranger stares with amusement at the dainty goat-chaises as they drive away filled with merry loads of children. Then he travels up to London and goes for a stroll in one of the poorer districts of the great city.

It is a Bank Holiday perhaps, or a fine Saturday in the summer-time, and the costermongers are off in their donkey-carts for a day's outing on Hampstead Heath. What a noise and clatter there is as the heavily laden little vehicles trot past, the donkeys looking so smart with their well-groomed coats and bright harness, and the drivers in the festive costumes decorated with pearl buttons that, surely, no foreign city in the world can rival!

We leave Whitechapel or the Old Kent Road behind us now, and journey out into the country, where, in some narrow green lane or on a breezy common, we overtake a yellow-painted gipsy van, hung about with baskets and brooms, and drawn by a sturdy, sleepy old horse. The owner of the van walks at his horse's head, or sits comfortably on the shaft, and through a little muslin-curtained window we catch a glimpse of his wife's dark face and long earrings. The gipsy children, ragged, bright-eyed urchins, lag behind, gathering flowers from the hedges, or run through the dust of the road to beg for pennies.

Certainly England has its own share of strange vehicles, and there are others even more curious still to be seen in out-of-the-way districts. One of these is the two-wheeled cart used for farm-work in some parts of Wales, which, in shape, is almost exactly like the ancient chariots that were found in Britain by the Roman invaders when they landed between Walmer and Sandwich nearly two thousand years ago.

Across St. George's Channel the quaint-looking Irish jaunting car is to be found, and then we travel back again to the continent of Europe. If we landed at Ostend or Antwerp before the War, most likely the first thing we should have seen would be a neat little cart loaded with vegetables or bright milk-cans, and harnessed to one or two large handsome dogs.

In England most dogs, except those owned by farmers or sportsmen, lead idle lives, but this is not the case on the Continent. The dogs of Belgium, Holland, and Germany are quite content to work—and to work hard, too—for their livings. There are numbers of them in the towns and villages, bravely dragging heavy loads, or lying down between the shafts and taking a well-earned nap in some shady corner of the cobbled street.

In Belgium dogs were employed, not only for peaceful purposes, but in times of war for drawing ambulances, little ammunition wagons, and machine-guns.

Oxen are also used to draw carts in most of the European countries, and very picturesque some of them are. In Turkey most elaborate bullock carts are used in some districts as mourning carriages, and in them women are conveyed when they wish to visit the grave-yards. These carts are usually drawn by two animals which wear, fixed to their collars, large curved pieces of wood hung with tassels. The carts themselves are elaborately decorated, and while one man leads the bullocks another, staff in hand, walks at the side of the vehicle.

Russia is a country where the carriages appear very strange to English eyes, for there three horses are driven abreast, and while the two outer animals gallop, the one in the centre is trained to trot. As may be imagined, a very skilful and experienced driver is necessary to guide these droskeys, as they are called, along the rough country roads or through the crowded streets of a city.

Among other curious vehicles which may be seen in Europe are the small two-wheeled omnibuses of Portugal and the quaint, gaily-decorated carts of Sicily. These latter conveyances are picturesque and interesting, for they are covered with paintings of figures and landscapes, while even the wheels are ornamented and carved. Donkeys draw these brilliant little carts, and they are usually used by fruit-sellers, but often they may be seen with a heavy load of passengers.

Before the time of railways large public travelling carriages, called diligences, were used in France, Switzerland, and other European countries. They were great, cumbrous vehicles carrying many passengers with their luggage. In out-of-the-way country districts, and among the mountains, these old-fashioned diligences are still to be seen, clattering along the dusty roads or toiling up the steep passes across the Alps.

CHAPTER IV
JOURNEYS THROUGH INDIA

We have seen some of the strange vehicles of England and Europe, and now we will travel eastward into Asia. There, as is only right, we must go first to India, for the great peninsula is one of King George's dominions, and its inhabitants, whether they be black, brown, or yellow, Hindoo or Mahomedan, civilised or savage, are as much British subjects as we are ourselves.