Lehrjahro and Waiiderjahre i:; ( .i 



He has himself iu his Memories (p. 55) told us how he escaped three 

 or four days' quarantine at Trieste by the quaint process of making 

 Spoglio. The assumption made is that an apparently healthy human 

 body passed through water is not as dangerous as the clothes it carries. 

 Accordingly a few days before termination of the usual quarantine 

 there is a medical inspection and the doctor directs those who satisfy 

 him, and wish to " make Spoglio," to a covered quay ; opposite to this, 

 at a distance of about 20 feet, is a second quay, the two being separated 

 by a strip of water four or five feet deep. On the second quay are 

 vendors of clothes. 



" A bargain had to be made with one of the old-clothes men by shouting across the 

 water. I," writes Galton, " was to leave everything I had on me, excepting coin or 

 other metal, and papers which were about to be fumigated, in exchange for the offered 

 clothes. When the bargain was concluded, I stripped, plunged in, and emerged on the 

 opposite quay stark naked, to be newly clothed and receive freedom. The clothesman 

 got my old things in due time that was his affair. The new clothes were thin, and the 

 trousers were made of a sort of calico and deficient in the fashionable cut of my old 

 ones ; but as it was not then late in the year the thinness mattered little in those 

 latitudes, and I did not care about the rest." 



From Trieste Galton returned by way of Venice, Milan, Geneva 

 and Boulogne. We have no record of the home-coming beyond what 

 Galton himself has told us : 



"My dear kind father took my escapade humorously. He was pleased with it 

 rather than otherwise, for I had much to tell and had obviously gained a great deal of 

 experience." Memories, p. 57. 



But the seed had been sown ; the first attack had run its 

 triumphant course, and the Wanderlust would manifest its power 

 year after year in Galton's life. He himself says : 



" This little expedition proved an important factor in moulding my after-life. It 

 vastly widened my views of humanity and civilisation, and it confirmed aspirations for 

 travel which were afterwards indulged." 



182 



