Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again. By such ways and
means, I would come to the cluster of chalets where I had to turn
out of the track to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl
like a young giant, on espying a traveller – in other words,
something to eat – coming up the steep, the idiot lying on the
wood-pile who sunned himself and nursed his goitre, would rouse the
woman-guide within the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing
her child over one of her shoulders and her goitre over the other,
as she came along. I slept at religious houses, and bleak refuges
of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night heard
stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths and
drifts of snow. One night the stove within, and the cold outside,
awakened childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was
in Russia – the identical serf out of a picture-book I had, before
I could read it for myself – and that I was going to be knouted by
a noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings, who, I think,
must have come out of some melodrama.
Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains! Though I
was not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting
down into the level country, and I ardently desiring to linger
where I was. What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses
they plunged into, what rocks they wore away, what echoes they
invoked! In one part where I went, they were pressed into the
service of carrying wood down, to be burnt next winter, as costly
fuel, in Italy. But, their fierce savage nature was not to be
easily constrained, and they fought with every limb of the wood;
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
whirling it round and round, stripping its bark away, dashing it
against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and roaring
and flying at the peasants who steered it back again from the bank
with long stout poles. Alas! concurrent streams of time and water
carried ME down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to
the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at
the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and
the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing
like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in
my hand.
– The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the
March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, ‘How
do you like it? Will it do?’
I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling
chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the
London Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it, for a friend
who was going abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I
tried the cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of
travelling remembrance before me.
‘It will do very well,’ said I, rather sorrowfully, as I got out at
the other door, and shut the carriage up.
CHAPTER VIII – THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO
I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has
a terminus in London. It is the railway for a large military
depot, and for other large barracks. To the best of my serious
belief, I have never been on that railway by daylight, without
seeing some handcuffed deserters in the train.
It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our
English army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it.
But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being made as
acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour.
Such men are assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly
inversion of natural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than
swinish foulness. Accordingly, when any such Circumlocutional
embellishments of the soldier’s condition have of late been brought
to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness cheerfully
meditating on an Income Tax, have considered the matter as being