It is supposed that Ryall, after watching for some considerable time, must have come to the conclusion that the lion was not going to make its appearance that night, for he lay down on the lower berth and dozed off. No sooner had he done so, doubtless, than the cunning man-eater began cautiously to stalk the three sleepers. In order to reach the little platform at the end of the carriage, he had to mount two very high steps from the railway line, but these he managed to negotiate successfully and in silence. The door from this platform into the carriage was a sliding one on wheels, which ran very easily on a brass runner; and as it was probably not quite shut, or at any rate not secured in any way, it was an easy matter for the lion to thrust in a paw and shove it open. But owing to the tilt of the carriage and to his great extra weight on the one side, the door slid to and snapped into the lock the moment he got his body right in, thus leaving him shut up with the three sleeping men in the compartment.
“…and always there is the counterpoint between
life within the train and life without…”
Passengers on the Uganda Railway, 1903
He sprang at once at Ryall, but in order to reach him had actually to plant his feet on Parenti, who, it will be remembered, was sleeping on the floor. At this moment Huebner was suddenly awakened by a loud cry, and on looking down from his berth was horrified to see an enormous lion with his hind feet on Parenti’s body, while his forepaws rested on poor Ryall. Small wonder that he was panic-stricken at the sight. There was only one possible way of escape, and that was through the second sliding door communicating with the servants’ quarters, which was opposite to that by which the lion had entered. But in order to reach this door Huebner had literally to jump on to the man-eater’s back, for its great bulk filled up all the space beneath his berth. It sounds scarcely credible, but it appears that in the excitement and horror of the moment he actually did this, and fortunately the lion was too busily engaged with his victim to pay any attention to him. So he managed to reach the door in safety; but there, to his dismay, he found that it was held fast on the other side by the terrified coolies, who had been aroused by the disturbance caused by the lion’s entrance. In utter desperation he made frantic efforts to open it, and exerting all his strength at last managed to pull it back sufficiently far to allow him to squeeze through, when the trembling coolies instantly tied it up again with their turbans. A moment afterwards a great crash was heard, and the whole carriage lurched violently to one side; the lion had broken through one of the windows, carrying off poor Ryall with him. Being now released, Parenti lost no time in jumping through the window on the opposite side of the carriage, and fled for refuge to one of the station buildings; his escape was little short of miraculous, as the lion had been actually standing on him as he lay on the floor. The carriage itself was badly shattered, and the woodwork of the window had been broken to pieces by the passage of the lion as he sprang through with his victim in his mouth.
All that can be hoped is that poor Ryall’s death was instantaneous. His remains were found next morning about a quarter of a mile away in the bush, and were taken to Nairobi for burial. I am glad to be able to add that very shortly afterwards the terrible brute who was responsible for this awful tragedy was caught in an ingenious trap constructed by one of the railway staff. He was kept on view for several days, and then shot.
J. H. PATTERSON,
Man-Eaters of Tsavo
Australia
1. Across the Outback
My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.
So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne—that juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map—looks like a county, in fact—yet it is about as large as England, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just 80 times as large as the State of Rhode Island, and one-third as large as the State of Texas.
Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favorable to other great industries—among other, wheat-growing and the making of wine.
We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the car was clean and fine and new—nothing about it to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be described as continental.
The tickets were round-trip ones—to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip wouldn’t cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the bowlder it emerged from on some petrified legislator’s shoulders.
It is a narrow-gauge road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies—the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable.
All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefited.
Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived.
We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named. “My word!” as the Australians say, but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; towering and majestic masses of blue—a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky—made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful color—just divine.
A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were rabbit-piles. And explained that lo
ng exposure and the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order.
We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and cheap. The government establishes the prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies—generally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levée in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how.
All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through thin—not thick—forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark—erysipelas convalescents, so to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children—rugged little simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.
Notice to passengers at a halt in the Australian interior:
“To stop express, wave the tin flag. At night, light candle in lantern.”
And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy advertisements—mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of “sheep-dip,” if that is the name—and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee?
We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhyncus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals-no “blackfellows.” And to this day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.
MARK TWAIN,
Following the Equator (1897)
2. The Ghan Express
From Quorn I caught the Ghan to Alice Springs, the oasis town in the centre of the continent. The Ghan was a train which ran once a week, and at the Alice the railroad ended. The name commemorated the outmoded camel trains which had been run by Afghans. The moment you stepped aboard the Ghan you entered a new world, where inhibitions dropped to zero and mateship soared. It became the only world for you where you were safe from the arid wastes and burning ridges outside. My carriage was one of those long ones with seats down the sides. At least, there were seats until some of my fellow-passengers tore them up to make room to dance in, to the music of the bagpipes which one of them played. The only lady in the carriage was the bundled-up lubra of a black-tracker employed by the police, and she had a moustache. So the passengers, who were tough-looking miners and stockmen, chose partners among themselves, assumed the embrace of the ballroom, and went jigging and yelping and hoo-roo-ing up and down the aisle as the train bounded and rattled and bored its way into the empty night, and the bagpipes wailed and shrieked. I huddled in a corner, pretending not to notice. The journey was to take three days and two nights. Presently one of the cattlemen, as tall as Chips Rafferty, but aggressive and red-haired, loomed over me and demanded my name. “Thomas,” I said. “Good-oh,” he said, “mine’s Bluey. Your hair’s too long—what are you, a musician or something?” I confessed that I had been a singer, so he turned to the others and shouted, “Shut up, all youse, Tom’s going to sing us a song.” I cleared my throat and delivered a verse and chorus of “Stick to me, Bill.” Bluey called the meeting to order and announced, “Now listen, Tom ’ere’s my mate. Anybody wants to sling off at his hair gotta do it to me, see?” There was a murmur of agreement and dancing was resumed. “Where’s your swag, Tom?” asked my self-elected protector. The bush-man travels with his possessions rolled in a blanket. I had to confess that I had no blanket. Bluey leaned down closer, which was alarming. He was unsteady on his feet, not only because of the lurching of the train, but because he had drunk a lot of methylated spirits and he had the breath to prove it. “Leave it to me, cobber,” he whispered hoarsely. “You gotta bash the old spine in comfort. I’ll scrounge you a blanket and we’ll snore off on the floor. Right?” I said “Right,” and Bluey rolled away, shoving through the dancing couples, past the happy bagpiper, out of the carriage. Soon he was back with a blanket for me and we all lay down on the floor and slept. Like most of the fellows, Bluey had no money and was cheerfully making the journey on spec, hoping to get a job somewhere in the Northern Territory. He was too proud to let me buy him meals in the dining-car, so I smuggled food out under my shirt.
At one of the lengthy stops, the engineer invited me to drive the train for an hour or two through the roadless, fenceless land. I got up there amongst the roaring steam, the fire-eating furnace, the rattle and roll. No houses or tall trees, a world of sparse mulga scrub; once a dead horse by the line, a couple of emus racing away from us, a tall, brown kangaroo bounding alongside, a lonely prospector’s grave. All the way empty beer bottles sparkled in the sun, cast there by passing travellers. The fireman had a wonderful theory that they may affect the chemical composition of the soil, and in turn the vegetation grown in it, the animals which feed upon it, and in due course the local humans. We snorted and swayed over the dry, pebbly bed of a river with white ghost gums on its banks, at a full thirty miles an hour. There are only two seasons here—the Dry and the Wet. When the rains come, sudden and heavy, the dry river beds change into raging torrents and men crossing them are sometimes swept to their death. The Overland Telegraph, 2,230 miles from south coast to north coast, paced beside the railway track. Some of the poles had to be carried 350 miles and were then gnawed away by insects, and aborigines stole the insulators to make spear tips. Men gave their lives to put those wires across the continent.
Some time after midnight, unless the train is on schedule, the steep red sides of Heavitree Gap tower above the track, and on a plateau 2,000 feet above the sea you reach the terminus, Alice Springs, population 3,000. I said good-bye to Bluey and the piper and checked in at one of the two pubs. I had a job to do; they would camp under the stars till they found one. I had an itinerary to follow, their only obligation was to their appetites.
WILFRID THOMAS,
Living on Air
OUT OF THE WINDOW
In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea,
Are the little places one passes by in trains
And never stops at; where the skies extend
Uninterrupted, and the level plains
Stretch green and yellow and green without an end.
And behind the glass of their Grand Express
Folk yawn away a province through,
With nothing to think of, nothing to do,
Nothing even to look at—never a “view”
In this damned wilderness.
But I look out of the window and find
Much to satisfy the mind.
Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled
In a motion orderly and stai
d,
Sweep, as we pass, across the field
Like a drilled army on parade.
And here’s a market-garden, barred
With stripe on stripe of varied greens…
Bright potatoes, flower starred,
And the opacous colour of beans.
Each line deliberately swings
Towards me, till I see a straight
Green avenue to the heart of things,
The glimpse of a sudden opened gate
Piercing the adverse walls of fate…
A moment only, and then, fast, fast,
The gate swings to, the avenue closes;
Fate laughs, and once more interposes
Its barriers.
The train has passed.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
A Chinese train
Two days later, at seven o’clock in the morning, we left Hankow by train for Cheng-chow.
Our servant Chiang accompanied us to the station. Already before dawn he had arrived at the Consulate to report for his first day of duty—a demure and dignified figure, in his patent leather shoes, black silk robe, spotless linen and European felt hat. His grandeur tacitly reproved our shabbiness—Auden’s out-at-elbow sportscoat, my dirty, baggy flannels. We were unworthy of our employee. He was altogether a gentleman’s gentleman.
At the ticket-barrier, Chiang began to exhibit his powers. Herding the coolies with our baggage ahead of him he flourished our Government passes (stamped with the Generalissimo’s own chop) beneath the awed nose of the sentry. We should have lost face, no doubt, had we deigned to present them ourselves. Then, when everything was arranged, Chiang stepped aside, with a smiling bow, to let us pass. This, his unctuous gesture seemed to say, is how Big Shots board a train.
A Book of Railway Journeys Page 20
