ANTIQUE FABLES OF THE OLD TEUTONIC RACE.

From the Westminster

Review.

TRAVEL DURING THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.*

in the north, and determining its place on the so-called antarctic continent in the south, that the ancient wonder and awe have been converted into an interest of a very different character. It may be no misemployment of an hour, in this year 1858, to glance at the changes introduced into the life of the present generation by the extended travel of recent times, even going no further back than our own century.

There is no doubt about what travel was in its early period, when war carried men abroad as commerce and science do now, and when colonization grew up in the rear of war, establishing a chain of posts between the natural homes of men and the uttermost parts of the earth, as the earth was to them. The images of the early traveling period are familiar to all of us who love modern travel; Abraham resting in the Libyan desert, and looking up at the glazed and pictured Pyramids; Thales saying farewell to the priests at Thebes, and hastening home to Ionia to amaze his countrymen with warn

ONE of the discontents of our saucy modern days is at the smallness of the globe we live on. Between the recent discoveries in astronomy, on the one hand, and the prodigious achievements in geographical exploration on the other, together with the saving of time from steam-traveling, we seem to have obtained a command over the spaces of the globe which considerably diminishes the popular reverence for the mysteries of our planet. In the old times it was regarded as practically unlimited as an area of human habitation; whereas we now see the foremost nations contending, by force or trickery, for the one, two, or three spots remaining available for colonization. A colony must have a great river, and possess its outfall; but there are no more great rivers, we are told. This really was the reason of the intensity of the struggle about Oregon-the American and the British Governments being both convinced that the Columbia was the very last great river that was to be had, all the world over. Since that, to be sure, the Russians have appropriat-ings of an eclipse, which really happened, ed the Amour to very good purpose; and Dr. Livingstone has opened up the Zambesi; so that prudent people will not assume that all the commodity of great rivers has been taken up by the human race, and much less by the civilized part of it. Still, there is so small a portion of the globe that is absolutely unknown to the existing generation, and they have so compassed its dimensions by sailing round it, and then, by finding the magnetic pole

and which suspended a battle between the Medes and Persians; and the grave, observant olive-oil merchant, who appeared at Memphis from Athens, and carried home something more than Egyptian corn-even that knowledge of legislation which causes every great lawgiver to be called after him—a Solon; and Pythagoras meditating among the tombs beside the Nile; and Plato training himself in speculation in the schools; and others who dropped hints when they returned to their various homes that the wise men in Egypt could tell of a way round Africa by sea, and that there was land far out in the Atlantic, immeasurably beyond the Pillars of Hercules. We are all familiar with the conceptions of Herodotus in his wanderings; and of Alexander carving his way to the Indus; and of the curiosity of Roman officials holding place

in the outlying colonies of the empire; | Hakluyt was not aware of any absurdity and of the antique Christian missionaries, in offering to the public "The Principal attaching themselves to Mongolian cara- Navigations and Discoveries of the Engvans, and bearing up against the horrors lish Nation, by Sea or over Land, to the of Central Asia, in order to carry the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of Gospel to China; and of Marco Polo, liv- the Earth, at any Time within the Coming two lives in the term of one-looking pass of these 1600 Years;" whereas a sinback from his Chinese existence upon his gle expedition now furnishes more to reItalian life, as we fancy the departed sur- late than the travel of a thousand years veying their mortal career; and the tra- did then. Hakluyt devoted one volume veling students, and the Crusaders, and to the north and north-east, from Lapland the merchant-speculators, and all the va- to the Sea of Japan, and a second to the rious wanderers in the early period of lo- south and south-east; while the third was comotion, which furnished such wonder- occupied with the new western world; ful supplies of domestic entertainment whereas a duly qualified traveler would during the stay-at-home term which suc- fill the three with any one of the coun ceeded. We have all been amused, in tries in Richard's whole catalogue. our time, at the popular curiosity and At the opening of a period so new, the reverence which waited on voyagers dur- delight in voyages and travels was chiefly ing the period intervening between the as a luxury of the imagination. The luxdecline of the old causes of travel and the ury itself was ancient enough witness birth of the new. Othello's account of the popularity of the Odyssey, and the this mode is perhaps the prettiest we welcome awaiting the wayfarer in all have; but there are other images cluster-places and at all times at which any mening round the great new birth of travel tal development was present; but every in the sixteenth century. Among them is that of the vivacious and inquisitive boy, Richard Hakluyt, who delighted in visiting a rich relative, that he might stand for hours before the charts spread out on the walls, and devour every book of "cosmography" on the library shelves. We all have our sympathies with the youth and the maturity that grew out of such a boyhood-mastering all languages which contributed books or MSS. of travel; now concentrating all the geometrical and nautical science of his time on the charts with which he illustrated his lectures at Oxford; now deciphering the MSS. which he had fetched from distant countries, at great cost of pains and money; now deep in consultation with Drake and Walsingham, or receiving letters from Ortelius or Mercator; and at last yielding to the fascination of Raleigh's incitements as they worked together over the Naval History of England, so that he became one of " the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers" engaged to plant and inhabit Virginia. Many of these images flit across our memories as we pass Hakluyt's tomb in Westminster Abbey, or see in any old library the set of his works; but perhaps the truest idea of the man and his occupation may be obtained by contrasting those works with the most recent books on geography, or narratives of extensive travel.

new country opened up by adventurers afforded, or was expected to afford, new stimulus of wonder-new material of the marvelous. If readers had outgrown stories "of men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," they had no distrust of monkish narratives of tribes in Africa who married beautiful damsels one day, in order to breakfast on delicate steaks of them the next morning. It was a received fact that in Ireland every body had a familiar spirit, and that the convenience of getting every thing done by diabolical skill was so great, that no exhortation availed to break the bond. Such racy anecdotes, with a background of scenery of like fidelity-on land, whole wildernesses of monkeys, elephants, and serpents that swallowed a village for supper, and slept coiled up on an area of twenty miles every way; on rivers, the leviathan and crocodiles, from which there was no security but that they were so long that they could not turn; golden sands, moreover, and broad channels strewn with pearls and gems; and at sea, all manner of strange fishes below, and strange birds above, and ghosts on the horizon, and cloud-lands painted by the devil, and mermaidens and pirates, and spontaneous illuminations of the sea. These things, with the actual perils and exciting adventures of a period when travelers were unaccountable strangers wherever they went,

made narratives of travel the favorite lit- | more worth having, by a spreading parerature that they were for a century from ticipation among all peoples in the spethe time of Henry VII. cial inheritance of each.

The interval between the fit of travel of the sixteenth century and that of our own exhibited a rather dull way of going about the world, and much less of it than might have been expected after such examples had been set as those of Vasco de Gama, Columbus, and Marco Polo. The gentlemen of Europe still visited other countries before settling down in their own; but it was in the way of making the grand tour, as a finishing part of educa tion. Their travels were no pleasure to people at home, but rather the contrary

thirty years ago, and of the Alps, and the Nile at present. In 1779, Horace Walpole was "much amused with new travels through Spain by a Mr. Swinburne." He says: These new travels are simple, and do tell you a little more than late voyagers, by whose accounts one would think there was nothing in Spain but muleteers and fandangos." This style of relating travels is accounted for in the next sentence. "In truth, there does not seem to be much worth seeing but prospects; and those, unless I were a bird, I would never visit, when the accommodations were so wretched."* There it is! Bad accom

How different is the interest now! The value of Hakluyt's books was great, not only because they gave some knowledge of the existence and characteristics of remote countries, but because they expanded and enriched the minds of readers with new imagery and associations, and liberalized their conceptions of mankind in its variety of life and ways. Paths of commerce were thus opened, also, and roads to other good things; but no man then living, were he Bacon himself, could suspect what could be achieved by travel in the course of half a century, when once-like the narratives of Rhine travelers the impulse was given, as it has been in our days. It was not then conceivable how the conditions of life itself would be changed to millions of our island-nation who have never crossed any of its "four seas," -to hundreds of thousands who have done so little travel in their own persons as never to have seen the sea at all. It was not then imagined that by measuring a degree of the earth's surface, the system of the heavens could be revealed; or that men could weigh the globe by the specimen of a mountain; or that the constitution and history of our planet could be illustrated by visiting the sea-beaches of South-America; or that men should com-modations kept our locomotive gentry on pel the sun to paint instantaneous pictures of precipices overhanging the Pacific; or volcanic rifts in mid-air, by which the formation of the globe might be traced at home. Nobody dreamed that, by going over the surface of the earth, secrets might be learned about its center. Nobody supposed that, by introducing to one another's knowledge by hearsay, populations living on opposite sides of the globe, millions would be added to both by the creative operation of commerce. Few could have imagined even how far history might be disclosed by antiquarian travel; much less could it have occurred to the most far-sighted that interpretation would lead to prophecy, both in science and in history; that the imagination of fireside voyagers would be more richly feasted than ever, the more real the tale of travel became; and that the life of men universally would be tempered by new arts, adorned by fresh and innocent luxuries, secured by a perpetual expansion in political science, grounded on wider and wider induction, and rendered altogether

one track; and when they returned, they could tell of courts, and politics, and modes of society in continental cities; but all the rest of the wealth of "foreign parts" was neglected and undreamed of. Even enlightened men supposed there was nothing but "prospects" to be seen. Arthur Young introduced the idea of a more edifying way of traversing foreign countries; but his social observations and economical inferences did not prepare a good reception for the more adventurous class who were about to set forth on fresh explorations of the globe. The more conventional were the narratives of gentlemen who were handed over from one ambassador to another at the stations of the grand tour, the less chance had the adventurous sort of being appreciated. The mournful story of Bruce reveals, in the clearest light, the spirit of the time. It does not occur to travelers like Bruce, and like some other educated and honorable gentlemen who might be pointed out, that

*Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. vii. p. 187.

their accounts of what they had seen would be utterly disbelieved at home, and that they should be pronounced impostors, as soon as they had any thing to relate which comfortable and conceited domestic people did not know before, and had not happened to imagine. Horace Walpole, who could sit at home and conceive of marvels in a Castle of Otranto, could write in this manner of a gentleman who was more amazed at being supposed a liar than all the Walpoles and Selwyns of his time could be at any thing that happened in Abyssinia.

"Would you believe that the great Abyssinian, Mr. Bruce, whom Dr. B- made me laugh by seriously calling the intrepid traveler, has had the intrepidity to write a letter to the Doctor, which the latter has printed in his book; and in which he intrepidly tells lies of almost as large a magnitude as his story of the bramble, into which his Majesty of Abyssinia and his whole army were led by the fault of his general, and which bramble was so tenacious that his majesty could not disentangle himself without stripping to the skin and leaving his robes in it; and it being death in that country to procure or compass the sovereign's nudity, the general lost his head for the error of his march.

This Theban harp, so fit for Lady Mansfield's dressing-room, and therefore so clear an invention of Bruce's, is the very thing now so well known to Egyptian travellers in the tomb called Bruce's at Thebes; and there, in the hollow of the rock, has the old harper stood for thousands of years, while scores of generations of giggling fine gentlemen have gone to their graves quizzing stout adventurers who have seen more than their critics can imagine. Walpole vented his contempt on the whole class. After Bruce went Banks; and then Cook's "Voyages" came out. We find Walpole saying in 1783:

tion in Europe, who would go, like Sir Joseph "When the arts are brought to such perfecBanks, in search of islands in the Atlantic (sic) where the natives have in six thousand years not improved the science of carving fishinghooks out of bones or flints?"—Letters, viii. 438.

And in 1784 he wrote:

"In short, Mr. Bruce has not only described six Abyssinian musical instruments, and given their names in the ancient Ethiopic and in the court language, but contributed a Theban harp, as beautifully and gracefully designed as if Mr. Adam had drawn it for Lady Mansfield's dressing-room, with a sphinx, masks, a patera, and a running foliage of leaves. This harp, Mr. Bruce says, he copied from a painting in fresco on the inside of a cavern near the ancient Thebes, and that it was painted there by the order of Sesostris, and he is not at all astonished at the Franklin, D'Urville, Wilkes, or Barth miracle of its preservation, though he treats would have pleased him no better, while poor accurate Dr. Pococke with great contempt he measured all lands and peoples by the for having been in the cave without seeing this prodigy, which, however, graceful as its form standard of home. If it was incredible is, Mr. Bruce thinks was not executed by any that an artist in Ethiopia could use better artist superior to a sign-painter, yet so high colors than our Reynolds, we can not was the perfection of the arts in the time of Sesac, wonder that the barbaric spectacles seen that a common mechanic could not help render- in Abyssinia should be pronounced audaing faithfully a common instrument. I am sorry cious inventions, or that the insulted our Apelles, Sir Joshua, has not the sign-paint-traveler should become somewhat savage er's secret of making his colors last in an open in his resentment. "Come, now," said an cave for thousands of years.

"Captain Cook's Voyages' I have neither read, nor intend to read. I have seen the prints -a parcel of ugly faces . . . rows of savages, with backgrounds of palm-trees. . . . uncouth lubbers: nor do I desire to know how unpolished the North or South Poles have remained ever since Adam and Eve were just such mor| tals.”—Letters, viii. 482.

"It is unlucky that Mr. Bruce does not possess another secret reckoned very essential to intrepid travelers a good memory. Last spring he dined at Mr. Crawfurd's: George Selwyn was one of the company. After relating the story of the bramble, and several other curious particulars, some body asked Mr. Bruce if the Abyssinians had any musical instruments? Musical instruments!' said he, and paused'Yes, I think I remember one-lyre.' George Selwyn whispered his neighbor: I am sure

impertinent intruder, who had penetrated to Bruce's study, in his house near Loch Lubnaig; "I want to know about those Abyssinians eating beefsteaks raw." Having heard the facts, he went on: "Come, now; you must eat a beefsteak raw; you must, indeed. You say you have. I can't believe you, you know, unless you prove it." Bruce rang the bell, and ordered up some raw beef, salt, and pepper.