LETTERS OF TRAVEL
(1892-1913)
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY' were published
originally in The Times; those entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in
The Morning Post; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS' in
Nash's Magazine.
CONTENTS
FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY (1892) -
In Sight of Monadnock
Across a Continent
The Edge of the East
Our Overseas Men
Some Earthquakes
Half-a-Dozen Pictures
'Captains Courageous'
On One Side Only
Leaves from a Winter Note-Book
LETTERS TO THE FAMILY (1907) -
The Road to Quebec
A People at Home
Cities and Spaces
Newspapers and Democracy
Labour
The Fortunate Towns
Mountains and the Pacific
A Conclusion
EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS (1913) -
Sea Travel
A Return to the East
A Serpent of Old Nile
Up the River
Dead Kings
The Face of the Desert
The Riddle of Empire
* * * * *
FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY
1892-95
IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK.
ACROSS A CONTINENT.
THE EDGE OF THE EAST.
OUR OVERSEAS MEN.
SOME EARTHQUAKES.
HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES.
'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.'
ON ONE SIDE ONLY.
LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK.
* * * * *
IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK
After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a
flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the
New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of
our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such
and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than
content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering
a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in
the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full
of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze
reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen.
Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine
hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that
he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even
'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go
north if you want weather - weather that is weather. Go to New
England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar
and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much
too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where
the snow lay. It came in one sweep - almost, it seemed, in one turn of
the wheels - covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen
ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of
ink.
As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb,
slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a
sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of
a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it,
is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of
conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in
the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how
he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out
of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh
at your interest in 'just a cutter.'
The staff of the train - surely the great American nation would be lost
if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car
conductor, negro porter, and newsboy - told pleasant tales, as they
spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up
the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks - four engines together and a
snow-plough in front - on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of
walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the
thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that
way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman.
Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it
at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the
breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack
was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats,
caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet
more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost
as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground
sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without
sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry
to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the
jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream,
for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a
little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the
sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut
River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed
ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small
bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon - snow drifted
to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of
frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying
heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed,
by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond
expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a
Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to
time by the restless pencils of the moon.
